The zero
of discovery.
The ‘no’
that trespasses.
They take our things.
What occurs blank on a map,
a trick of light,
making ‘harbor’ disappear.
We cross into a room torn
up by its roots
and wing-bones.
“There is more than one way to know a word,” you say.
Light, with its arms
full of waves, receding.
You say, “the clearly visible is no less mysterious.”
I no longer know what should be thrown out and what saved.
You say, “the words were never ours to keep.”
In the unrecorded margin,
we wait for the sound
of the ‘sea’
to end.

CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ is a co-founder of Achiote Press and author of from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008). His poetry, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared in New American Writing, Pleiades, The Denver Quarterly, The Colorado Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others.