Ischia
Sofia Bagdade read "Ischia" on Sunday, August 24th at the Rudolf Steiner Bookstore.
Stare at the sea for long enough, you’ll feel all the water sloshing in your bones. Pools of blue carved from volcanic rock—faith, forgiveness, rage. All the movement gives way to a translucent bay so dense with salt you can float on your back. The sound of divers kissing the water with sun-swelled bodies, every breath becomes itself. So goes the simplicity of exchange. Strutting our bareness, stoked by light. Eyes of red snapper like pearls on ice. Naked feet burnt to the bone, crisping with sun if only for intimacy. Word on the waves is that this place sprung from a giant’s body stretched from eyelash to kneecap, each town named for a part left behind and formed by impression, tight fists against the shallow basin of a womb— first lines drawn from contact, from holding fast then releasing. Origin stories like invisible borders between us, warping the physical legend from sailors drunk in rinse/repeat, tongues heavy with history, spelling beginnings of sound— if you listen close enough, the gasping of gills cutting the depths in packs, sharpened skates to ice, fresh. At noon, the surface so still you can see straight down: flecks of purple polish, pebbles that resemble grandfathers with their speckled, sun-yellow eyes A grain of salt so invisible buries a quiet burn to wet skin, a mosquito’s needle bites. We are full enough of life to extract from. So much to give, a whisper from burnt lips that leaves the air fuller than it was before. A cracked open door: bodies cycling like memories, caught in silver exit, turnstiles dented with thighs that pass and return for more touch, routes memorized. There is always more than our hands can hold, heaviness turned empty at water’s break, outlines dissolve and eventually a sort of silence returns. Stare at the sea long enough you become so full with every rush of closeness, just one of a thousand silver fish passing through the quiet blue, searching for each other
Sofia Bagdade is a poet from New York City. Her work appears in One Art, The Shore, and Roi Fainéant Press, among other publications. Currently, she’s working on a longer poetry collection and trying her hand at short fiction. She finds joy in smooth ink, orange light, and French Bulldogs.