Merchant Ships.

<TN>Lott, Olivia</TN>

 And then they are fleets'
wakes,
excesses
of ships in the night.
Among swells of mist
set loose
by the mouth of the abyss,
a steel flock
rattles
in the wind
and is off
splitting the dense liquid in two.
It's propelled by the containers
shaking from the containers
singing and roaring from the
honey seeping out of the containers.
They are the postapocalyptic horns
that wade through until they bite at the ports
creaking when at worship and war
before the new flesh forms:
sheds smelling
of imaginary bread.
Egg cartons
where a plastic chicken
is born
with
true
animal
effort.
Pig
farms
to feed
pigs.
Eight hundred million egg shells
and vessels
asleep in the middle of vessels.
As for
the merchant women,
they are opening trunks
looking for earrings
made of stone,
glass
pressed to
plastic,
and as they go
they toss aside
apple cartons
that don't know the goodness
of going bad
for nobody.
On the docks
before the day's cargo
we squander the ancient custom
of offering up terror and wonder
to what comes by sea.

Translations from the Spanish

By Olivia Lott

Andrea Cote Botero (b. 1981, Colombia) is the prizewinning author of the poetry collections Puerto calcinado (2003) and La ruina que nombro (2014). She is also a translator of poetry from English into Spanish and is currently assistant professor of poetry in the bilingual MFA program at the University of Texas, El Paso.

Olivia Lott's translations of Colombian poetry have appeared most recently in Mantis, Rio Grande Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tupelo Quarterly, And Waxwing.