[MUSE THEORY] [sea horse] 

by dennis hinrichsen

 

 

 

—day long rains // big waves // sea horse // solo //

 

blown in from the reef // that’s the message today

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—there is no other elsewhere // just this one

 

so fully loaded w/trauma there must be a muse

 

that governs it // today // rain & sand blown to needles

 

against the gel of the eye—that’s the angularity—

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a cutting as precise as the sea horse is—

 

my body turned inside out w/looking—as its eyes are—

 

water for sand // it has seen things // —O

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exoskeleton knitted w/flesh // little wing on your back //

 

you are wreckage plastic now // muse of eating

 

& being (eaten) // birthed as you are out of the belly

 

by the thousands—a gut-blast (as I was) (still am)—

 

a speck of skin & a little code in a sea of plankton

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Dennis Hinrichsen is the winner of Grid Poetry Prize for 2020 for his collection This Is Where I Live I Have Nowhere Else To Go which will appear later in the fall. His most recent work is is [q / lear], a chapbook from Green Linden Press, and Skin Music, winner of the 2014 Michael Waters Poetry Prize from Southern Indiana Review Press. His previous books include Rip-tooth (2010 Tampa Poetry Prize), Kurosawa’s Dog (2008 FIELD Poetry Prize), and Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights (1999 Akron Poetry Prize). His other awards include the 2015 Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Prize from Map Literary for Electrocution, A Partial History as well as the 2016 Third Coast Poetry Prize and a 2014 Best of the Net Award. From May 2017 - April 2019, he served as the first Poet Laureate of the Greater Lansing [MI] area.