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Sam Burns - Underwater Acoustics
Well Versed is edited by Jody Porter
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Underwater Acoustics
Sam Burns
Sound carries better beneath the waves.
We drifted to your side as you choked
on your neck fat; shattered your sleep
with a chorus of stories of drought
and war and hope, and little
brackish footprints on your sheets.
You heard. We thought you were deaf.
It’ll take us a lifetime to tell
you our names. But we’ll do it.
We’ll gurgle them into your waterlogged ears
whenever you swim, when it rains,
when you shower, like air bubbling out
of a poorly-patched lifeboat;
a calving iceberg; like whale song.
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