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Winter 2019/20



Robert Gibbons

O, THOU EVER RESTLESS SEA, GOD’S A HALF-UTTERED MYSTERY
 (after Albert Laighton, Missing Ships, 1878)

 

Something will never be found, the Spanish doubloon,
my missing class graduation ring; the pink of sapphire
the sink of the Hunley; three miles down is a long way
to the third heaven; feeling the tectonic plates of obscurity
lost to the Pacific; to Muir; to a place without hemisphere
of East or West; with life vest or saving grace; ever-restless
reminds me of Wallace Stevens when he mimics the lights
in the distance; when he observe the usage of tragic-gestured
ever-restless; tragic-gestured; hemmed together by hyphen
without oxygen; not being able to take breath; in this endless
need for fame; so disappear like the Lusitania; behind the 
curtains of the sea; sink without life float; without oar or drunken
boat; maybe dissolve into fossil; into creature and remain
a mystery; there are no film crews or no tabloid to exploit 
this variety; the piety of privacy without piracy; the controversy
of booty of Caravaggio; then rust as relic; propel to the deeper
deep; in this eternal sleep; of life without rhyme or chronometer
without mast of barometer; ever and tragic to utter at last.



Robert Gibbons received his MFA from City College in New York. His credits include: Close to the Tree (Three Rooms Press, 2012) and You Almost Home, Boy (Harlequin Creatures, 2019) His chapbook, Flight, was due out in the Fall of 2019.


 

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