Read the introduction by guest editor Robyn Schiff.
BYSSUS,
the
bundle of filaments
secreted
by "the noble pen shell, true mussel,
and the false"
is, it's said, "ugly
in the dark."
And thinly spread though it is,
dark's the sea
where byssus does its work,
uglily.
But if the byssal threads
are cut—
just so,
with no detriment to
the mollusk
that made them, having extended its
fine-clinging
tensile hairs as strong as
the sea which
would jilt them and's thwarted –
having
extended these straw-wisp
suction cups
to cling to the rocks and tenanted
detritus,
or a stable vagrant
mistico
slipped down to stay –
having by
increments secreted
a byssus
which hardens in the water, and grips,
the secure
mollusk has no sense for
what does
not move it, and you may
snip its stiff
scruff –
oh,
this mollusk
has all the comforts of
tide and the
comforts of shore, you may take a lock
of its locks
without loosing the life,
the pen shell
may be swayed, slightly, yes,
and the sea
meadow spreads, and you may
outstretch –
you may lace
your hand in the thin threads,
tethers
"too expensive to be quotable,"
and remove
one or two in good faith,
if you know
the method of the cut
that promises
neither to unmoor nor
mortally
wound it –
in all
of Sardinia, in
all of
Italia, all the globe, who
can hold
these feather-anchor-spits,
split-hair-
thick, sheer and quoteless,
this byssus?
Chiara Vigo, who
is in years
getting on, but has a
daughter yet,
today
Chiara is diving
below
gentle naval boats, to do what she
only,
and shorn strands of byssus,
knows, not
even a
mollusk, not even a
pen, I
imagine –
and only
imagination makes
trespass
in the unsightly dark,
but if
the thread is cut,
severing
the fine umbilico
between pen
and sense of shore, this diminishes
by a hair
the unaccountable
inventory
of the deep, and also
increases
by a hair or two to
follow the
pen shell's hold, soundless threads
bridging each
absented space –
as if
to insist
something will follow – as
if this
is harmless
(have you learned
to be harmless) –
in darkness
she distinguishes the
body from
its cables; she cuts, each
keeps; at
surface, the thick dull threads
are soaked,
dried and combed, combed once more,
doused in
lemon, and finally
strand on strand
"twisted together with
a spindle
made of oleander,"
and then –
—threshed in
a nearly see-through cloth
called "sea silk,"
the spun threads glister goldily.
Of sea silk
such songs are wrung. But I
have not
learned to harvest one thread
without harm
and without harm I fear
you haven't either.
NAVAL SHIP WORM
THE HOLES
Copper-bottomed boats,
the Royal Navy hoped
could keep the teredo,
ship worm, limber mollusk,
out. "Cosmopolitan,"
veriform, and cited for
"depravations,"
this bivalve makes use
of its small shell
as a tool to tunnel into
soft salt-soaked wood,
rasping at fibers
until inside
the worm stays
where it will
whittle, chip, and enamel
a self-same space
until it's done for.
And though one made
a solitary habit
of existence,
so had others the same
made fulsomeness
in emptying.
The ship fills,
the ship empties;
at a slight bow blow
the hull furrows,
crumples,
and with stray particles,
fast water,
the bilge overflows.
But copper on the water
frustrates a wood-intending tooth—
where copper meets brine will bloom
an oxychloric-slick surface
that deters a prospective
boarder. And it sickens.
Therefore sheath
the complete royal fleet
with the stuff. It's 1779.
Sheath the merchants vessels
but seldom the traffickers
through warm waters.
For the sheathed ships sail
slower than before.
And it sickens.
Betime ship worms
who want for only
wood and seawater
rapidly take residence
elsewhere.
Is it a worm
across the ocean
in buoyant open tangles
of tree limb and foam
cusping? Does the worm
undergird a seaside outpost
of the firm-footed world
in a country "bathed
on all sides by sea"—
as is Holland where
a century later
along the Y:
Nieuwendam's
bedded pier posts
riddle with holes
where homes had been
and sea water slides
through center until
"at slightest blow"
the dock crumbles into sea?
And some live below
where copper-plated hulls
heavily coursed their bulk
of shadows—a submerged
fo'c's'le, mast beams,
crow's nest cupped in mud.
Notice escapes.
It also leaves open
holes all over.
THE HALLS
A ship worm is "never
known to destroy
the work of another."
In close quarters
at a rapping
through the wall
it swerves its line-like
excavation askant
at strong angles
from the run of the grain
from its ease or pleasure
from all comfort future
that it might avoid
an encroachment.
A ship worm is never
known to another.
THE HOLD
It's born swimming,
"open at both ends,"
muscle stretching long
across cavity.
The ocean very deep.
And wood in it but rarely.
It swims and swims and
that is it. Or swims and
swimming fastens on
a passing timber
passing fast,
begins to move with it,
lurching "at a not
inconsiderable
rate of speed,"
surface overtaking.
When it finds its foot
on wood that will do,
with foot it suctions a grip,
and twin triangles of shell
affixed as a face
around a mouth
press the grain.
The shells lined
with wedgelike teeth
around the tranquil foot pivot,
"auger-bit, gouge, and file,"
rasping the timber
as steadily it gives
a way inside.
Rows of teeth
that in turn had served to turn
the surface
retreat inside the throat.
Fresh tools
accrete and dull
into an efficiency
the worm lets itself.
Increment by
increment,
the ship worm glazes
freshly excavated
arches of the gallery
to a nacre
"scarcely less hard"
than its shell.
And entryway dwindles
to window.
Dwarfed now
in a corridor
it can never quit,
the worm grows to fit
its home. The worm
it seals the door.
In necessity
two posterior
siphons slip
across the lintel.
The lither one to sip
oceanic aliments
and the stub-tail
pumps out swill
and floods into the sea.
And when that sea
wafts danger,
two palette-shells
snap over the end
like a hatch.
Alyssa Perry lives in Iowa City, where she works as a teacher, actor, proofreader, and editorial assistant with Rescue Press. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her recent work appears in jubilat, LVNG, and Poetry Northwest.