Floodlit — Allie E.S. Wist

"Floodlights: a sea level rise exquisite corpse" was published in WHITE OUT: Underpressure and Other Human Failures, Montez Press + 3S Artspace, 2018.

Written with Eddie Shumard

The ocean is hushed
by an ashy silence,
settled but unsettled as waves wash over what once was.
Floodlights are more flood than light,
white stones hold their breath under the ocean that long left the boundaries
of an old home,
seeping into communities that once walked on dry land.
Something smells like an urgency of what was,
and yet is still undone,
outdated and yet to be.
Built by men who thought they saw the future before.
Water spits from the ground now,
as children write love letters to their future selves,
rapt in play
imagining how they will tear up the notes they leave later.
We press them into the soil with each step,
blithely churning our hearts
like the water that laps at our feet.
Made heavy with shoes filled
with a wet fear we try to ignore.
We see the model we call home,
wonder if the charts and maps they draw can really be true.
In the future we'll float like a projection
on old sheets stained in the sun,
sorry we stopped wondering,
sad we are left satisfied that we survived.
Its hard to see, she said, the suns sigh seems harsh now,
Fountains of rays fill our eyes so we cant possibly see.
We wont panic
when we find out our shadows are really slow monsters
clawing at our backs.

response
They say it’s parched for water
other places,
but here it’s always wet.
Water washes away our hopes for denial.
We gave up on that soggy ground long ago.
Saline dandelions
still grow in geysers by the shore,
and we crush them into pesto in the morning.
Seagulls caw loudly, through the window blinds,
excessively reminding us
that we are coastal.
The whole neighborhood is fishing off of railings and balconies. Hauling in what we can get,
hunting and gathering again.
We scoop thick handfuls of seaweed growing on rocks under old piers—
smells
dank and rich and full.
I hear that things used to smell less, and I wonder
how we moved through odorless spaces.
The seaweed goes into buckets and on backs and dried on racks and given as gifts to our neighbors.
Strange to think it’s parched for water other places.

response
A Dinner with Ocean Views
is served on top of Tower A,
that grand structure built years ago
by men who saw the future.
We constructed a table
out of wood salvaged from the waters—
scaffolding for the construction of a new habitat for us,
the lineage of our past's future victims,
forgotten already before the waters made their way up stairwells,
into children's bedrooms,
into our shoes and our ears.

The marvelous dinner is lit by floodlights—
more flood than light these days—
shining beacon of elapsed and misplaced hospitality.
We hauled in oysters and crabs and mussels
and we will cook everything on the 23rd floor of Submerged Tower A.
We wrote a menu based off of scraps of paper we found—
notes they left us with secrets about bouillabaisse
and smoked cod
and bagna crudo.
We brush our hair with forks
and drape our pale bodies in salted seaweed.
We built chairs out of bricks
which sigh with their histories and cough up river water.
Some of the children salvaged wood from the first floors,
where they say echos of loud laughs still resonate.
The master of ceremonies
begins the evening by pouring scotch into vessels made from shoes,
still wet with fears of a past warning.
We press our hands into the soil to help with the vertigo.
Handprints become coasters and placemats.
We eat mussels in saffron broth and algae and truffles
and prosecco col fondo—"with sediment."
We laugh when the sun glints in our eyes—
clinking glasses that slosh with an eidolic lurch.
Sometimes shadows dance down from the bridges cables,
drawing maps and lines and charts onto the water below.

response
I feel like every dinner I have these days
has an ocean view.
One foot dangled off the edge
tempting tepid waters with tattered toes.
Too many trips late at night,
toe bashed and bruised from walking dark halls with only floods and not light.
I sit on eve of the 23rd floor
smoosh even my face into clear glass
stating as I lean all my weight onto what I hope is as fragile glass
as was the coastline, or concept thereof.

Every party these days,
on a roof, pointing and charting.
Triangulating where I was and you were going.
How far we are from here or there
or when this or that
finally sunk below the wet horizon.
I just wish you could still hear them laughing from downstairs,
I hear if you listen carefully and the water is calm,
gentle waves pulsing a soft rhythm
against everything from the 8 floor down
you stand with a coupe glass pressed gently against the elevator shaft
just east of her door.
The old woman who sloshes in her husband's old boots
that sigh with every step
a sad I told you so.
you can hear them,
not the boots but the laughter.

the sun tickles my eyelids,
I realize I've been staring at the sun
with my eyes closed for a while now.
I sip scotch from a very lovely Italian leather shoe,
and make my way across tower A's roof
to see if she brought anymore mussels up from the 23rd floor.
You'd be surprised how many people have saffron in their cupboards.
Little jars filled with the deep hued hand picked flowers naughty bits,
resting untouched on dank shelves in kitchens long left empty.
Since our cities long since been reinhabited by bivalves and crustaceans,
we slip between Avenue's
stealing the things
sent to clean up our mess
on the sides of sunken towers.
My shoes empty,
and she's combing her hair with a fork again.
maybe someone down on 23 has more of that col fondo...