This round of applause goes nowhere to the root of things. We jingle jangle until we can’t anymore White shirts juxtaposed with ties and black suit jackets are white tusks.
Clouds blend, burst, in different shapes, like cookies.
water is polar ...
water is an excellent solvent ...
water has high heat capacity ...
water has high heat vaporization ...
water can be cohesive ...
water is less dense as a solid than as a liquid ...
water can dissolve more things than any other common liquid, and be a solid state (ice) that floats ...
water can adhere to itself and other things ...
water can act like neither a liquid nor a solid, but something in-between ...
our brains and hearts are 73% water, lungs about 83%, skin’s 64%, muscles and kidneys 79%, and even our bones are watery: 31% ...
is water wet? ...
we swim
along a fir-drawn coast without a glance outward.
I stymied. I-stigma.
To think I had to find a way to absent myself in this domain preserved for voice. Things take time like ice walls and cracks in spiraled and spirited glaciers, except for bots on sea floors.
Shira Dentz is the author of five books, including SISYPHUSINA (PANK Books), winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize 2021, and two chapbooks including FLOUNDERS (Essay Press). Her writing appears in many venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Idaho Review, New American Writing, Brooklyn Rail, Apartment, Lana Turner, Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, Poets.org, Poetrysociety.org, and NPR, and she’s a recipient of awards including an Academy of American Poets Prize and Poetry Society of America's Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Awards. More at www.shiradentz.com.