"Notes on a Mass Stranding"/Split This Rock Poem of the Week

Split This Rock  Poem of the Week -  Kamilah Aisha Moon  Photo by: Rachel Eliza Griffiths Notes on a Mass Stranding       I. Huge dashes in the sand, two or three times a year they swim like words in a sentence toward the period of the beach, lured into sunning themselves like humans do-- forgetting gravity, smothered in the absence of waves and high tides. II. [Pilot whales beach themselves] when their sonar becomes scrambled in shallow water or when a sick member of the pod heads for shore and others follow III. 61 of them on top of the South Island wade into Farewell Spit. 18 needed help with their demises this time, the sharp mercy of knives still the slow motion heft of each ocean heart. IV. Yes--even those born pilots, those who have grown large and graceful lose their way, found on their sides season after season. Is it more natural to care or not to care? Terrifying to be reminded a fluke can fling anything or anyone out of this world. V. Oh, the endings we swim toward without thinking! Mysteries of mass wrong turns, sick leaders and sirens forever sexy                                             land or sea. The unequaled rush and horror of forgetting ourselves   -Kamilah Aisha Moon        Used by permission.   Kamilah Aisha Moon's poetry collection She Has A Name is forthcoming from Four Way Books. Her work has been featured in Harvard Review, jubilat, Sou'wester, Oxford American, Lumina, Callaloo and Villanelles, among other journals and anthologies. A recipient of fellowships to Cave Canem, the Prague Summer Writing Institute, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and The Vermont Studio Center. Moon received her MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.         Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of theWeek widely. We just ask you to include all of theinformation in this email, including this request. Thanks! If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.     Split This Rock www.splitthisrock.org info@splitthisrock.org 202-787-5210

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