we took our crayon box

and went to town with you

painting you a poisoned peacock complexion

that doesn’t look so bad from above

when waxed with sunlight

marbled cerulean swirls

and seems to stretch

unveiling deep sapphire veins

azure tangos with the paler blues

to reveal streaks of

tiny tie-dye islands

but from up close, beside the patches of oily rainbows…

a brown bubble burps

without excusing itself

and dissolves into an uneven surface

slithering along slippery sewage

soon the sunset will singe this mosaic

of colors curdling in the light

fermented goldenrod recoils

from the stained ruby blotches flecked

with white while

hues of rusted carrot lazily dribble along

a fringe of spinach hued sediment

go on us, canal

we seem to be begging for it

i envision

an opaque lavender lake cocktail

served in a frosted martini glass

with a little square napkin underneath

This poem was written by Cindy Mahan, a participant in the Child Development Institute’s Empowering Teachers Program at Sarah Lawrence College, after a day-long Dead Horse Bay excursion and workshop led by Underwater New York.

Along the beach, footprints cross the sands

Out of time’s reach from distant lands.

Uncaught balls and soulless shoes.

Porcelain dolls and petrified news.

A lizard clutch purse, spectacles, and Boonton dishes.

Layers of life disperse, revealing immigrants’ work and wishes.

Charcoal and glass choices splayed by the skull of a bird.

Forgotten voices… yet their echoes are still heard.

This poem was written by Helene Alalouf, a participant in the Child Development Institute’s Empowering Teachers Program at Sarah Lawrence College, during a day-long Dead Horse Bay excursion and workshop led by Underwater New York. View photographs of some of the found objects that inspired her poem, collected and photographed by another CDI participant, here.

I see swirls of blue, bright white light, windows with light,

seeping liquid, and a defining white line.

I hear stillness, water lapping up against the side of
the boat, and the sound of metal banging.

I smell bilgy water, decay, and the day’s catch.

I feel anticipation.

Broken, sad, hopeless.

I feel anticipation.

Optimistic, hopeful.

This poem was written by participants in the Child Development Institute’s Empowering Teachers Program at Sarah Lawrence College during a day-long workshop led by Underwater New York.

Brian–

You told me that there were beaches in New York City. That was one of so many stories I believed. Well, let me tell you, just because a place has surf and sand, that doesn’t make it a beach. I took the bus to the very end of that horrible street which, I don’t care what you think, has traffic worse than any you can find in LA, and landed not just at the end of Brooklyn, but at the very end of the world. Does that sound dramatic to you? How about this: it was the end of time. I looked down hoping to find somewhere soft to rest my head and what I found instead was a whole century collapsed around my feet. Strap-on roller skates rusted nearly to dust, horse bones bleached by a hundred years of salt, a plastic clown doll from that show my mother was on as a child, shouting her heart out from the bleachers. Can you believe—I went to the water to hypnotize myself out of thinking about you and ended up thinking about my mother? The lesser of two evils, I guess. That’s beside the point, though—that’s not why I’m writing. By the time I walked the length of the bay, I was so sad looking at all of those poor, abandoned artifacts—objects someone, at some point, probably loved—that I would have laid down among them, hepatitis, tetanus be damned. I was wearing a bikini—yes, the white one with the little strings, and yes, on the bus ride, men stared—and I just wanted to burn, to prostrate myself in the sun. But before I could spread my towel down, I saw, there on the sand, a full set of dentures. They were smooth, warm to the touch. And I wondered if you still have those dreams, the ones I used to comfort you after, where all your teeth fall out and you don’t know why. Do you?

–Sylvie

This letter posted for our Missive in a Bottle activity … write your own letter inspired by an underwater object.