Fortunes we’d like to see

E. Well’s Hole

E. Well’s Hole
By Jeff Barnes

Swimming through your sigh’s vernacular
I am heavy with breath, weighted and bobbing,
breaking ripples against sound till the fish come up for air
kissing for the sky and moon, lacing dander with
flecks of rust from swallowed barbs long forgotten
beside strange piercings stacked one atop the next with no recollection
of the bleeding worm, your words are flooded and rising
to the top of me, through me, only to be pulled back in
with another breath. A bloated pause. Before I go back under.