Tolu Oloruntoba
(after Kay Sage)
association shuffles its sand nodes
even farther afield.
There’s a mirage on the horizon,
or a rumour of smoke
from a lenticular dune perimeter
concentrating the oblique sun.
***
Exposition’s hand can feel heavy
on the chest in slumber,
heavy as bomb-carrier-wide boardwalks
in sharp inclension to nowhere,
as you breach the surface
of a face-wet dream
to a premonition, a theory of involution
in which: if there can be no masts
on the non-ship, there must be sundials of
sailcloth reading 3:17 post meridiem,
or Dacron-ear prophecies breaking containment,
unfurling on the croft above the seed vault.
***
The Lost Ship of the Desert is a legend
of the ship that is where it should not.
Juan de Iturbe’s galleon, or the Bom Jesus,
or Clive Cussler’s Texas. Flying Dutchmen,
and spelunking zeppelins. Carrying gold,
or else death. Our landed whales wear
Bauhaus barnacles, and fiberop bling.
You are wanting, found
by meteoric satellites, terrible like
the thousand eyes of chitons, arrivant.
