A trickling cascade of kombucha with its twanging
like tart wine settles in a crystal cup, soda-bubbling
at the edges. Light sparkles on the surface;
foams to tickle your lips. I walk and sip
and pick up chalky shells, opaline, amethyst,
rust-hued, too. But I barely see past worn bits
of polymers more plentiful than potsherds
at a dig site. Guitar picks, bottle caps, tampon
applicators, flip-flops for sand- blasting into
mammoth forms. I hoist a conch ear-
ward: microplastics spill out like glitter in a globe,
its watery orb broken long ago— a womb
in menopause that weeps under a sky-quilt,
whose seams deny the world light. Patchworks
splattered with fermented tea forgotten
by a sea, forgotten. Waveforms continue to crash,
encouraged by the pallid moon. A moon sulking over
man’s sateen netting of artificial stars.
Stars so far away. When they fall, skipping like
stones, angled 20-degrees, I imagine bits knapped off
to sink below a sky-mirror with mottled silvering.
How do we distinguish stars from glitter?
How do we scoop up a googolplex of specks
that mimics ivory and has ocean fish outnumbered?
Sarah E N Kohrs is a potter, photographer, and writer, with poetry most recently in Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Rattle’s Poets Respond, Raven Chronicles, Watershed Review, and the winnow. Sarah has a teaching license, endorsed in Latin and Visual Arts, and homeschools her three sons, as well as directs Corhaven Graveyard, a historic burial ground for formerly enslaved Americans, and manages The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review. SENK lives in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, kindling hope where it’s needed most. http://senkohrs.com.
