after Jules Verne
Having won the lottery,
Lady Liberty goes out
for the night. Her heels
click on the concrete.
Her dress exile-blue. Overhead,
the starry wallpaper she’s
always dreamt of peeling.
She wonders. Outer space
& four leagues beneath.
How all it takes is the sharp
barb of a fishhook to pull
this nation up from the trenches,
breathless & unseen:
the last place without borders.
Her fear, like waves,
searching for something
to crash against. She tears
through a pearl brokenness,
hair loosening in a sea
of taxicabs. That the nation
& all its bodies should rise
like this. Now, she pretends
to be feral under sky
-scrapers with golden names
until nothing, not even
bitter fortune, can hold her.
