A Poem By Lisa Olstein

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Blue Water Navy

Darling, the world, it will come at you
with the migrating eyes of flounder
traveling through the matter of their own heads
having reimagined axis and ground.
There is a certain parasite that turns a crab
from male to female, or is it female to male?
The average male armadillo’s penis is larger
than that of some gorillas. I can’t help it
if most facts are, in fact, facts about sex.
Don’t bother pretending; don’t try to
fix this for me. We acquire debt.
An animal is able to live in captivity
which is where we take our measurements.
Watching them go at it sometimes we like to
say outgunned, outmanned, but definitely
not outfought. What we like is the idea
of making the invisible visible. True love
takes a lifetime of research. The foot
of the lake meets the mouth of the river.

Lisa Olstein is the author of three books of poems, most recently Little Stranger (Copper Canyon Press, 2013). She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Texas at Austin.

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at [email protected].