A Plastic Bottle Dreams At Sea by Alison Clara Tan

I want the wet whip of muscle

that runs through / each wave

and pummels / my empty carriage

between the thighs of the Atlantic.

I’m dreaming / of a white

whip of muscle / to sever

the sun’s pulsating yell / the slick

mouths / of salmon / furies

of touch / puffins / lighting on

my carcass / I’m dreaming

of a white / picket fence / a scallop

bride. The sun warming / the gyre

goes silent. A salt sky / rims

the Pleiades / into a hundred

ancient mouths / I used

to know / what is the measure

of a man / but the press of his

thoughtless fingers / on the open

casket of the ocean / but what

his thoughtless fingers open

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Alison Clara Tan is a Southeast Asian writer based in London. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in fourteen poems, The Kenyon Review, Gutter Magazine and Washington Square Review, among others. She is a Barbican Young Poet, a Brooklyn Poets Fellow and a member of Spread the Word's Poetics Lab 2025.