Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
“The US coastguard is to set fire to oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico to prevent the slick from reaching shore after last week's explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.”
-Associated Press Wed. 28th April, 2010
After the robots failed
man decided to ignite the ocean’s
new ink, a sublime send off
for the fuel, a slick and raw mess
coating the surface and the birds;
Feathered distractions, diseased synonyms for
sacrifice. Isn’t it easier to fly
through oil than to bathe in it?
Man drilled and shafted all at once,
visible darkness, black plume sucked and gurgled from
the absence of land, old death soaked over sea and refused
to mix but suited itself, grilling in a barely remembered sun,
begging to be set free. And man obliged, stared at his mess
and figured the sky would hold
what the sea couldn’t, a trading among blues, how bent
can the frame of the world be?
What shape is the oil?
The sea, for its part, refuses to be corralled or cooperative,
waves nod the stickiness forward in every direction, but always
towards land, towards the edge, restitching the seam of the world
into a bruise. Man, not god, says to set the ocean on fire and man
does it, incinerates his way out of his binds and is still
not divine.