as if numbers
can measure how
dark immigrant skin
is dark enough
to be blue
under strobe lights
carnivorous jellyfish
dirt-brown blood an ignition
of nightmares & sweat
the machine of the body
deserves to know that it isn’t
real
that none of the measuring amounts to anything
& that man or
woman there is a salt in our
blood that poisons us like seawater
& that only in the drowning
will we awaken
Poetry | on arriving in australia, 27 december 2000
