Just as we resolve, as a herd, to signal
we’re parched and itchy, but remain too meek
to let more than silence stress
we’ve stored enough memory of Neo Kameni,
the guide goads us to kneel and shove our hands
into the heat-exhaling holes. The polite dip a quick finger;
others snake palm-deep in half-inch increments.
A gaggle of teens squat low, one by one, to mouth
hot air for selfies; vertical again, they cave in,
tweet and all. To regain some ground, the guide
conjures Prometheus, Atlantis, the Minoan civilization
swallowed by earthquakes and eruptions, urges
imagine, imagine, you’re in the heart of the caldera,
scours the crowd for some kaomoji that recognizes
just how spectacular this beauty, how lucky to be held
within. I don’t know what it means that I miss you here,
in the stark extravagance on this ragged dome of molten rock,
that under the coarseness of the peasant sun I miss you,
extravagantly. This is new territory, neither yours nor mine,
perfectly active, measurably dormant.
If you are who I think you are, resting barefoot
on the tour boat, scanning each breaking wave,
you take this missing as it comes:
studded with obsidian stubble, obscene in its whimsy.
Mihaela Moscaliuc is the autor of Father Dirt (Alice James Books, 2010) and Immigrant Model (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), the translator of Carmelia Leonte's The Hiss of the Viper (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2014), and editor of a forthcoming collection of essays on poet Gerald Stern. She teaches at Monmouth University, New Jersey.