Impossible Bottle

Joaquin Soliven

You’re sat on the passenger’s seat in EDSA traffic the cannibal and the grim mouthed,

It looks like rain you say, Napalm light twirling round the widening gyre But (beneath) you mean: it looks like we’re late

And beneath even that, deep down in your nether mind you say (secretly) that it looks like a whaler adrift in the silken pacific knowing not that it is dead instead of becalmed as the sextant said, originally

Bereft of cloud or star, (satin-like) for all we know we could be skating through this town

Faster than a gull you say that, in fact, the gulf is parallel to a fault in the ground

You show me its progress through your palm (resting your lungs from all your singing)

Naming the hills we pass

Caelian and Aventine

This one is the line when aphrodite came Where I was wading in the ocean, a little farther than anyone else And stepped off of coral and seagrass onto sand

You mean to say: this line is the subtle relief of a small apprehension

And if the earth shook now

The sea would swallow our tongues