It might not be strange to find a butterfly
on a battleship, middle of the Indian Ocean,
middle of heaven’s torn wings, sulphured
and bleached into a child on a raft, or a shark
finning through lightning. The butterfly wants
to say its name is Rosita, or Candelita, or Wall,
or Iceberg. It hungers for marigold nectar all day.
It says its flesh feels like a frozen bullet, what
that feels like is all the pages of a book torn out
and burning in the middle of the battleship
when the storm is over, when the radar screen
says there is nothing real out there, nothing nearby,
just wave after wave, rising through the Zodiac
where the only thing with a chitinous exoskeleton
in the sky is a weird crab heavy with its giant stars
and nebulae scheming and scheming to grow wings.