From the blue loom of rivers
to Florida’s shorelines
where locals sift
sand for Tulip shells,
wind and current disperse
a deadly invisibility,
microscopic cells of algae
bursting in bloom
bursting with growth,
tentacling through coral
and seagrass to spread
its poison.
Karenia Brevis magnified
one thousand times
looks like soft dusty lobes
pinwheeling like a poppy
like a poppy
dead and colorless
dead as the seacow
unlowing in the waves
and the double-breasted
cormorants knuckled
with disease.
The schools of fish
pale in the harbor,
toxin-soaked
and sideways, hundreds
of one-eyes open to blue,
hundreds of ashen one-eyes open
unbloomed.
January Pearson lives in Southern California with her husband and two daughters. She teaches in the English department at Purdue Global University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Notre Dame Review, Atlanta Review, Third Wednesday, Gargoyle Magazine, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Journal of American Poetry, The Cape Rock Review, and Summerset Review.