POEM WITHOUT ANY METAPHORS

by Zeke Shomler

Most whales, I’ve heard, die
drowning. Their bodies slowly fail some other way

like cancer or like renal failure until
their muscles can no longer hold them up

for air. Because this is not a metaphor,
it must be a story. Like this: a parasitic fungus

is more akin to my own blood-wet self
than to mistletoe. And mistletoe

sounds like missile tow, by which I mean
a vehicle of war. I am trying to say something

about language, how it changes shape
like water. How one-eighth is the same

as two-sixteenths but their soft number bodies
look nothing alike. My freshman student

had said something like that, about fractions
and water, so it’s not a metaphor to say

I am a thief of words, or that a cowbird’s host
will raise a hungry chick who clearly

came from someone else. We call this
brood parasitism but I call it

beauty. I later learned that I was wrong about
the whales, but it’s true—I swear—

that inside a black hole, time and space
switch places. They call this

singularity but I call it
home. My country has no official language

though it still enforces one. I mean a dictionary
is a bold performance art. For light

to become a rainbow it must first
be split apart.





Zeke Shomler is a poet and educator in Fairbanks, Alaska. His poems have appeared in AGNI, Moden Language Studies, The Shore, and elsewhere. More of his work can be found at zekeshomler.com.