The Jellyfish

The jellyfish is feeling especially electric today.

Threads of voltaic grace have been threatening
to break off from her center,
diluting her gossamer rage and
pulsing her exposed to the vagaries 
of the waterworld passing through her.

The fact that the jellyfish has different metaphors
should give pause

should rankle the hegemony of the upright ground-bound body 
(the one that has to work so hard to swim or fly
the one that can’t decide if the future we see up ahead 
is really behind)

should awaken epistemologies of atmosphere
(that don’t rely on one foot in front of the other
that don’t need the arc of time to sweat out our discrete lives 
in droplets)

and yet we carry on wandering the flat earth 
as though we know it
unable to reckon with its demanding roundness

we are thirsty but afraid 
to let free the water
(for fear of losing it to the horizon’s edge)

so we cup our hands and dip them into a puddle of mirage
to drink the desert-soured juice of our myths.

***