asleep among endives

dorian winter

after Ichiko Aoba

your body: steeping in a teapot/ of freshwater/a blanket weaved from lichen/

submerging your skin. here, you are a supine herring/

briefly choking on coiffures of algae

and raindrops from above.

the sailboats have left for the day/ and we are stranded like two

wrinkled mammals on the cliff of the sea. i watch a windchime of seahorses/

shaped like treble clefs/ lazily blink in musical notation/ glissando/ near the seafoam/

i stand to wonder why we couldn’t stay/ the compass of our inner ears pointed towards/

the hum of gulfweed/ why we couldn’t stay/ cradled by the bassinet of the water/

sinking our gills into hibernation. you and i as fish – it’s not impossible/

maybe in another life/ the God above me is a hungry fisherman/ and you know

not to take his bait. maybe in another life/ the scales

aren’t just musical/ but they pattern our bodies

like drenched, rippling crochet.

maybe we won’t sink this time.

Dorian Winter is an emerging artist and writer from Perth, Western Australia. His art & poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in Pelican, Fifth Wheel Press, Outlander, The Ekphrastic Review, Ars Sentenia, The Malu Zine, the engine(idling, Echo Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Additionally, he is the founder and editor-in-chief of Antler Velvet. You can find him at dorianwinter.com, or maybe at a French bakery somewhere.

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