The Sea Turtle

I am learning math on the back of a
sea turtle. He swims forever in the
brine of the ocean and its low dips
find diamonds; these shine between
my toes amongst the kelp and green
seaweed and mussels in a vast black
churning chorus upon the top,
moving up, slanted, opening. Call
forth help.
He arrives in blankets of foam. He is
also a woman with white skin and
pink eyes. A hermaphrodite albino
frozen in the atmosphere. It is cold
and wet.

Council me in the history, maps and
ancient topography. The years make
webs and cross over one another in
the sky. They have also opened in
me like flowers and I’ve got to hear
its languages.

The sounds and keys of Y under cold
sheets of the moonlight, the hump-
back whale astride a trunk of clothes.
S riding horseback, M stirring
coffee. B getting drunk. Cool it,
gang, your turn will come. It will be
in the time of the turtle, the year of
me, such numbers fallen together in
the sea. And the green levels and the
purple levels. Black and silver rise in
equal measure as time.

I glance to the island. Komodo
dragons hiss on bellies, they sniff
the sand for seashells and empires
on the edges of her hair. Their saliva
is poison, and if I drink it the
memories of history will swell and
reverse in action, and suddenly the
future will be at the end.