Adrift in the Age of Dictators

by Jude Marr

ships are trees, bodies are water
heart songs are fire: we are, because liquid
this world our container

I take breath from the bottom of the sky
watch bodies fall, a billion
cadences, rhythms of lost years

particles of plastic sift through air, sweet
as civet, or salt-tinged
resting or in motion, catching light

they drift, an ocean of crescent-shaped specks
where seabirds flail: remote, entangled
moons in the stomachs of birds.

Jude Marr (he, him) is a Pushcart-nominated trans poet and editor. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, most recently in Acropolis and Whale Road Review. Jude’s first chapbook, Breakfast for the Birds (Finishing Line Press, 2017) was followed by a full-length collection, We Know Each Other By Our Wounds (Animal Heart Press, 2020.) His next chapbook, Silence Will Not Save Us is forthcoming from The Broken Spine in November 2027. A native of Scotland, Jude has lived in three of the UK’s four countries and also spent ten years in the southern United States. He now lives in Coimbra, Portugal.