Surface
By Shine Ballard
Waking from this slapdash, sporadic
sleep, febrile forty, i recall a re
current theme of being submerged in water.
A body of, poollike. i’m buried in its
bathing. First, pinned beneath, for a few
moments, my leftarm, by the heaviest boy
of my graduatingclass. Then penned, in pond,
perhaps, a lakelike pool, beneath—however
tropical or fabled this may transmit—a lifesize
inflatable Scottish monster. i wake from these
hypnogogicmoments as one breaching the surface
of the water : gasping, gulping in
the bottom nestled barely above such locked
Below.
Shine Ballard, the terminaltyro, currently creates & resides in North Carolina.