Psychogeographic Map of the Night Herons’ Clattering
A silent seam opens
and wakes me from the ocean dream
where night herons are about to die.
Boats collide with whales
and we are heedless
of the signs
strung up between
the beam and the stern.
I signal somnambulant
sea deities.
Insomnia soaks through pink light,
as I listen to the rustle
of your breath
in my hair.
The anchor tattooed on your arm
is the weight that keeps me from despair.
A flock of moonbeams
herds a siege of heron shadows across
our bedroom wall.
When you stir,
I feign sleep
so I can keep dreaming
of the black crowned night herons
clattering with their nestlings.
On the bridge of the ship,
my hair snaps
like nautical flags
semaphoring in an abandoned language:
I will
save you.
But only seabirds
decipher the message.
On a bare boat charter,
I begin the process of dead reckoning
towards the islands where the night herons
are beginning to disappear.
Using only a star chart,
and the flight patterns of seabirds,
I navigate the endless
violence of the blue.
Maria Garcia Teutsch is an award-winning poet and professor. Her most recent collection, What She Saw in the Lotería Cards was published by Bottlecap Press in 2025. She directed the one act play, The Swallows of America as part of the 2025 Speech is Not Free VII festival. In 2023 she wrote and directed two one act plays, The Revolution Will Have its Sky: a poem in one act, at Studio Apelbaum; and What She Saw in the Loteria Cards at Galerie Z22, both in Berlin, Germany. Her cinepoem, The Revolution Will Have its Sky was a part of the 2023 official selection of the Fotogenia Festival in Mexico City; among others and was a finalist at the New Arts International Film Festival in London, England. In 2025 her cinepoem, The Blue Whale of Madness was a semi-finalist at the Palermo, Brussels and Austin Film and Art Festivals. She is currently working on a manuscript of poems about bird extinction, as well as a new cinepoem.
A silent seam opens
and wakes me from the ocean dream
where night herons are about to die.
Boats collide with whales
and we are heedless
of the signs
strung up between
the beam and the stern.
I signal somnambulant
sea deities.
Insomnia soaks through pink light,
as I listen to the rustle
of your breath
in my hair.
The anchor tattooed on your arm
is the weight that keeps me from despair.
A flock of moonbeams
herds a siege of heron shadows across
our bedroom wall.
When you stir,
I feign sleep
so I can keep dreaming
of the black crowned night herons
clattering with their nestlings.
On the bridge of the ship,
my hair snaps
like nautical flags
semaphoring in an abandoned language:
I will
save you.
But only seabirds
decipher the message.
On a bare boat charter,
I begin the process of dead reckoning
towards the islands where the night herons
are beginning to disappear.
Using only a star chart,
and the flight patterns of seabirds,
I navigate the endless
violence of the blue.
Maria Garcia Teutsch is an award-winning poet and professor. Her most recent collection, What She Saw in the Lotería Cards was published by Bottlecap Press in 2025. She directed the one act play, The Swallows of America as part of the 2025 Speech is Not Free VII festival. In 2023 she wrote and directed two one act plays, The Revolution Will Have its Sky: a poem in one act, at Studio Apelbaum; and What She Saw in the Loteria Cards at Galerie Z22, both in Berlin, Germany. Her cinepoem, The Revolution Will Have its Sky was a part of the 2023 official selection of the Fotogenia Festival in Mexico City; among others and was a finalist at the New Arts International Film Festival in London, England. In 2025 her cinepoem, The Blue Whale of Madness was a semi-finalist at the Palermo, Brussels and Austin Film and Art Festivals. She is currently working on a manuscript of poems about bird extinction, as well as a new cinepoem.
