Echolocation by Colleen Coyne | Really System: Issue Eight

Echolocation

Colleen Coyne

Down the dark
coastal highway,
black as wire
bound in cable—

this car is a call box
for unnatural disasters.

There are three crashes,
three kinds of fire.

The guard rail whines and frowns.

Three ways to extinguish waves.

I only wanted to reel you
in. Key you, tag your fin,

release you.

Marinate you
in steam,

become
marine.

Sleeping in your salt bed—
a wall of water separates us.

Steel scrim, cloud film.

What else can sound
travel through?

Your clothes?
Your bones?

Colleen Coyne is the author of the chapbook Girls Mistaken for Ghosts (dancing girl press, 2015), and her work appears in DIAGRAM, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Cream City Review, So to Speak, Tupelo Quarterly, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts, where she teaches writing and works as a freelance writer and editor. Find out more at http://www.colleencoyne.net.

ISSUE EIGHT: Melty Slayers | next poem →