Into the Deep

by Jalen Eutsey

After Caribbean Sea, Jamaica (1980)
By Hiroshi Sugimoto

Every great film
needs a star, a stillness,
an opaque notion
that the beady brown eyes
in the close-up are calling
all the starving maws
to the table, a table
absent every form of flesh,
littered with light;

a sense that the roof-beating
rain outside the window
is a dream-song
in an ice cream parlor,
a makeshift raft overflowing
with peaches and sage.

That stillness is in everything
if you listen hard enough,
whispering beneath the waves
like birdsong in the background
of a shallow mourning.

JALEN EUTSEYis a poet, librarian, and sportswriter from Miami, Florida. He earned a BA in English from the University of Miami and an MFA in Poetry from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. His work has been published in Harpur Palate, Into the Void, Cellpoems, and others. You can find him on Twitter @jaleneutsey.