Operation Haze
This week in the PEN Poetry Series, PEN America features a poem by Christopher Janigian.
Operation Haze
1
When the ark came in
I didn’t know
how but I knew I wanted
to study its fluids
There was this pressure
that tugged
Sailors combed my beard
2
The dock kept sinking / resurfacing
before me / I brought
down / all the yellow lines
two emerald / aluminum
ramps / two driftwood circles
were in there
3
Unpeeling the copper / I kept
myself in accord
with a relic
Uncorrupt eyes
in a goblet
or in my hands / eyes
when the captain ordered
their color removed
4
A man in a yellow vest
swam toward me / past me
toward laser-light
capillaries / fog off the coast
Off another coast / a bruise
absorbing
a stone
5
There was a chamber
with wet tiles / with a calm turtle
with a bleeding shell
My investigation
had slipped through me / Nectary
sailors in the bathtub / How did they get there
6
Grinding / they were wringing
the math out of me / said won’t you let
the calibration lines
lap your body
please
7
No sound
but a blurry tank
was coming / I tried
to find human eyes / was distracted
by a vacancy
8
Yesterday I lost two lights
when I ripped the yellow ones
out / Now it’s just me
and a borrowed mile
9
I think the sailors are okay
This is what I see: one sterile boat
one wooden boat and yellow
cars coming through both
10
To sense a gap
open. To feel it
utterly as one stays
flaccid in a locker room.
I looked down: feet
deep in a puddle / I could count
all the toes / boats I wanted
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