Collapse of the Key Bridge

With everything amassing, the midnight tide rings
Like millions of tiny bells. The ship is colorless
When it strikes, containers stacked like universes,
As white shadows huddle within the white trusses.
Cavernous structure, skeleton-peeled, wrecked haven.
The accident a sermon to the sea, a moon-plate
Slicing this one lane into the stomach of America.
When lights die out, they’re not restored immediately.
First a siren song must pass between each battery.
It was, as was foretold, the broken finger of God,
An angular death, a pillar sheared by the sudden
Silence, an electronic promise gone out—dunked,
Debased, stick-figured down into the turbid muck.
What is a port? Only a mouth to enter, I would ask,
A hive of mouths? It belongs to the sediment below
Each floating body, like pale petals twisting, torn
In the placid and silvery green water. All of this,
We’ve witnessed, a language of subdued light is
Our human life. Commerce of pain, bridge upon
Bridge upon bridge upon bridge. O thirsty clangor!
O sense stripped of poetry! We must find a manner
To solder back the chaos. To emit the eel faster.

–

Alejandro Escudé’s latest book of poems, “The Book of the Unclaimed Dead,” published by Main Street Rag Press in 2019, is now available. He received a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis.