By Aza Pace

Featured Art: (Children Swimming) by Unknown

Meanwhile, plastic particles
burrow in the Arctic snow

and in the sea’s deep trenches,
its legion bellies.

Meanwhile, a galaxy bursts
across my cervix—bad cells

someone will slice off
with electric wire as I sleep.

There is nothing untouched
in the whole furious world.

But the water today
in Galveston is blue,

with not a hint of tar.
In each wave, hermit crabs

and no bottle caps.
Babies in life jackets

tumble and squeal in the surf
while an older child bobs

out to the first sandbar
to fish. Meanwhile,

I think—I’m happy.
Under my tongue

sit the names of children
I will not make.

I roll them over and over
and love them.

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Aza Pace’s poems appear or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Mudlark, and elsewhere. She is the winner of a university Academy of American Poets Prize and an Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston and is pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of North Texas.