from Estranged Sonnet Archipel

A Woman’s Life is an Archipel

          A man in himself is a city
– William Carlos Williams, Paterson

Once I slept alone in this room,
nine months pregnant,
as the house filled with plaster and dust.
Now it’s the only space for an ocean
and my archipel. My archipelago has its own
ark. Its own double bed. It can save itself.
But the soft contours of the French version
somehow feel more kind.

This desk is the shoreline and all around
the shallows. From scraps and notes that settle
in strata for decades across the floor (homeless,
but not lost), I must construct my archipel
as a 3d printer does; raise my cays – though each may float
...