Ribbon

What can be said
when you dredge all words?
Slurry mouth; a cold suffocation.

Fire-edged and indifferent
or winking orange as a reminder;
you are still there
a dead road, a damp novelty.

Receive the dead reluctantly,
it is your choice to reveal or cherish,
to lose in the relieving sea.

Junk barges jostle their dull beetle carapaces.
No more precious cargo,
virgin queens in silk to be carried,
shading their arsenic-white faces.

Bottle, wrack,
bodies in suitcases,
the reflection of heads on pikes;
a glance from a car window.

Still nourishing the phantom limb of the city,
gone, the itch remaining;
the rusting cargo cranes
bow their deference still.