Larissa Shmailo
Death at SeaThe heart, someone wrote once,
Couldn’t walk a straight line
Couldn’t pass the drunk test if it tried.Some men play the odds; their heads count cards
But their hearts play inside straights
They can’t bluff, ever
Show their hand, most times,
And always give the pot away.Steven died at sea
Holding the dead man’s hand, aces up
A poker-faced corpse surfaces on the water
I see
The orange safety vest
Inflated around his neck
Mocking God and me
Now, now, now, now, now.
Too lateI held his wake in Vegas
Sat shiva in casinos
Where there were no windows, no daytime, no peaceI put him in a casket
A greedy one-armed bandit
It still asks me for coins
For its insatiable slotI hate the beach
The deadsea beach
The sunblocked snorkeled oily beach
The scuba lungs
The deadgrass skirts
The blind bikinied sunglass beachI hate the sea
The soulless sea
The sentient, malevolent swampy seaIt don’t care if you live
It won’t cry if you die
It boasts like Yaweh
It spits in your eye
The sea
The stupid sea.But I love the albatross
That took Steven’s soul
And I love the lighthouse and the shore
And I love all sailors both sober and drunk
That won’t kill a bird no matter what
And I love the salt and I love the storm
And I loved Steven, beyond most doubtAnd if I knew then
What I know now
Could I have walked on water
And pulled him out?
Bio:
Larissa Shmailo has been published in Newsweek, Rattapallax, Lungfull!, Street News, American Translators’ Slavfile, Medicinal Purposes, and other publications. She has read at Barnes & Noble, the Knitting Factory, the New School, the Langston Hughes Residence, for the Writers’ Harvest against Hunger, and on WBAI and WNYE, and has received “Critic’s Pick” notices for her appearances from the New York Times, the Village Voice, and Time Out magazine. She is curator of the Sliding Scale Poetry series, which showcases many of today’s prominent poets. She translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun by A. Kruchenych, performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and exhibited in video at the Los Angeles County Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.
