Chittagong

A kennings poem for Bellevue Hill Public School

Rusted whales
beached in the Bay of Bengal.
Ribs dismantled, returned
to metalled mud.

Ships splinter,
brittle as bone.
No time to
carve tombstones
in sand.

Blueprints don’t detail
these distances or depths,
boys hide and seek
in hulls.

Debris blazes on
scrapyard shores. Fractured shifts
of salvaged sleep,
dreams set adrift with

tomorrow’s satellites.
Below, there is a broken city,
the ocean can’t recall
all it has kept.