Two ships

Two Ships

an Ekphrastic poem

by Nathanael King

Just as promised, the brothers

of maritime war celebrate

their successful deployment

by squeezing the noon

tight between their hulls,

sharing stories of how

they kept their guts at sea

and the inverted black horizon

from drowning.

The light that splits them

can only hold straight

for so long, eventually becoming

distorted,

fumbling to separate mirrored steel

from the whole.