Slipstream (Sleep Study)

Alex DePinho | Spring 2024

in the still river/bed of my own body i am most alive
submerged: drowning, or breathing, maybe
both at once.

catfish are nocturnal, scaleless, (i can be too)
seductive, slippery under cover of night:
call me and i’ll be a faceless premonition of desire,
touch me underwater and i’ll be a shadow sinking,
slick and restless in my doorway
a black hole, an empty aquarium, something
transitory and piscean (deep, unlit, see-thru)

i have always done these things backwards, let me
make my bed and i’ll lie in it falling awake, pull me
heraclitean & gasping from the shallows and i’ll wade
barefoot & muddy into the same river twice, change only
like dark sky disrobes her gloaming purples, show me
up close and i’ll shut my eyes until i reach the surface
count down from a hundred, try to move again, say
air is not nothing if fish choke on it–