monologue as river tagus

i am full of dead. pink and white boats slit 

my wrists, ferry women crying behind their fists,

hating their sick sons back to health.

i transport secretaries blackmailing the middling powerful,

i walk my bridges with seagull feet, suicidal. 

language submerges me,

drowns without care 

my every syllable. i am full of dead. 

the tides know, the drowned and the dead live in me. 

first the fish eat the water, what of life throbs and dwells

in water;

then another fish eats it,

then another eats it,

then a shark eats the fish,

or a whale does

or a bigger fish

generally a bigger fish

sometimes a whale sometimes a man. 

first the fish eats the water,

the small and multiplying forces in the water;

in time the water will eat the man.

i eat them all in time: 

the tides know, the tides remember. 

i am full of dead. dolphins swim in me, 

rare flickers of jewel brightness. tourists 

sell me painfully to other tourists. i am full of dead. 

after me there will be nothing: only a hill,

only a vase overturned. i am full of life,

i steal light from light to

 multiply it into long dusks, i construct paragraphs 

on bad foundations, i stink.

Maria Duran is an art historian from Lisbon, Portugal. Her literary work has been published with Helvética Press, Gilbert & Hall Press, Black Moon Magazine, and Querencia Press, among others.