in the shape of a ship we might see all this

boundary of wood, waves written in “dustlike” script

writing in the shape of wave, boat, wood, desk, desk of boat and desk with no view of sky

all this imagined, as constellations are imagined

as the ship is written into visual shape

something for the eye to see and that image

to travel the close-to-infinite distance from eye to brain

Marcella Durand is a poet, editor and translator. I am the co-editor with Jennifer Firestone of Other Influences: The Untold History of Avant-Garde Feminist Poetry, published by MIT Press in Fall 2024, and the 2021 recipient of the C.D. Wright Award in Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art. Other books include To husband is to tender, The Prospect, The Garden of M., and Western Capital Rhapsodies. She lives and works in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

Calligraphic Galleon
Calligrapher ‘Abd al-Qadir Hisari, Turkish
dated 1180 AH/1766–67 CE