The Dive

I hunted shellfish in Fort Lauderdale,

the waves easy on my motorboat as it sliced

toward a rocky reef where lobsters had migrated

for the warm season. My wetsuit almost made

a tortoise out of me, stubby limbs connecting

to my torso encased by a mud-green game bag.

Snare in hand, I searched the seafloor for hens

until something came into view: a ribbon, maybe,

dangling like a translucent vine of tradescantia.

When I looked up, plastic mask pinching my nose,

Nettle jellies undulated like a paragraph

punctuated only by plankton and curls of shrimp.

The orangey tentacles swayed like tulle,

lulling me to reach for their touch, as if each tendril

were a boa I could wrap around myself,

each oral arm a word I’d like to keep. The smack

of jellies kept secrets tucked into their bell-curved bodies,

all propelled by silent thrusts against the weight

of blue-black sea. Peering into the feathered gelatin,

I may have seen the underside of speech itself.

---

CHLOE COOK is a poet from Kentucky. Her work appears in The New Criterion, The Madison Review, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from Community of Writers and Poetry by the Sea, and she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida. Her website is chloecookwrites.com.

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