By Andrew Michael Roberts

1.

go ahead be a ragdoll
facedown in the philippine sea.

touched only by salt
and the tender snouts of solicitous fish.

o your eyes shall be glazed
and immaculate as eggs.

2.

in a dream you become a silver-naped gull.

in a dream you were so high
you dipped your hair

in the rushing ephemera
of saturn's ice-dead rings.

3.

there's a galaxy somewhere
composed entirely
of seahorses

and entropy.

4.

in your honor on this
green earth i've crashed
through windows so holy

i slide beyond myself
out into the honeylight of
deceased trees.

where i am unequivocally revered.

5.

a sugary music wafts up
at the moment of exodus.

it smells of spent rifle shells.
it glints and swells.

6.

go ahead and float there.

Andrew Michael Roberts is the author of the poetry collections good beast and something has to happen next, which was awarded the Iowa Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. He is the recipient of a national chapbook fellowship from the Poetry Society of America and a distinguished teaching award from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He lives with his wife Sarah in Portland, Oregon, where he works as a cardiac nurse and frequents the library by bicycle. (Updated June 2015)