Row row row the boat
fiercely DOWN
DOWN DOWN
paddles swat body parts into waves pinked
by blood on the oars
hands clean
muddied souls one atop another
frog-marched
by restless swirls
out of hod pods
into smoke they become.
A certain unbecoming becoming
forms a rounded arch neon lit
to make purgatory look like heaven
to muddied souls suffocated on methane fume
fumigated
like the insects we are
by the insects who deny they crawl
about in the hull.
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Colin Greer is President of the New World Foundation. He was formerly a professor at C.U.N.Y. His plays have been performed off off Broadway and in regional productions. His poetry collection If But My Gaze Could Heal will be published by Lantern Books, Summer 2022.
Photo credit: Frances LaBarre