Home > PRISM Online > “Ways to Leave, or Waves” by Miguel Perez – Winner of the Pacific Poetry Prize 2021

Ways to Leave, or Waves

The lilies are losing their petals 
in pairs and I linger like resin in glass.
Every possibility waits at the center
            of a sunflower wilting

in the vase atop my bookshelf,
beside the uncalibrated clock
blinking an old time, 
           a loud green like algae.


All this wouldn’t have happened
if we hadn’t crossed the sea.
What was it all for? – to smoke cigarettes 
           on some balcony and hear waves crash?


Two seagulls fly from one horizon
to the other, in opposite directions. 
I feel the early morning in my brittle bones: 
           yucca fibers and sour milk. 


Splatter me across your blood-water sunset,
your curdled clouds and ocean veins, your silhouettes 
of palms splitting duplexes in two, your briny swirls
            of Van Gogh air, that gold-dappled moon.



            Let the water drown you
late into the night and sleep.
Deep through coral and chain
            yourself to the seabed.

Saturate the mind with good,
with leagues, with bioluminescence,
limp and floating helpless in a world
            too busy flooding to love you.