Eros on Battleship Island by Elisabeth Lloyd Burkhalter

Eros on Battleship Island

Anything open can collapse.
A girl named Eiko snuck down
the coal shaft, her family’s grief

is clipped by shame. The new arrivals
speak of other worlds in our archipelago,
concrete walls around those cities,

how waves all night scour them
for entry. Do they ever knuckle
under the pressure, salt tempest, surrender

whatever it is they’re protecting?
A man & his boy waiting their turn to pass
Salt Rain Crossing were caught,

swept away. The island hums their names.
Cramped bathhouses, verdigris & steam,
can’t wash the news off me. A canary

dropped in the coal pit chokes, miners
scramble to surface—I won’t be the first
to throw myself at sea. Won’t be the last.

by Elisabeth Lloyd Burkhalter, first published in Mississippi Review.

Elisabeth on Instagram

Editor’s Note: The first line presages the grim drama of the stories this poem presents. Death comes for us all, sooner or later.

[Apologies for the double post: the name was incorrect in the title in the earlier post.]

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