Christopher Bolin

Immersion Data

and teams deployed to dye-test the lakes’
high-water marks 

               and dye the egrets’ legs and egrets’ necks 
the color of the sky 
               to say we lost them in migration or in 

migration films; 
               and teams to document 

the language camps, and the children
in costumes

which would not catch 
                              on machines, in foreign factories;
                              or to document the children

not drowning                              to the calling 
                              of their Christian names; 

and teams crossing each lake 
to use the islands 

as memorials 

               of the mainland; 


Christopher Bolin’s first book, Ascension Theory, was a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award finalist, and his next book is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press, in 2018.  He has published poems in jubilatConduitPost Road, Lana TurnerHyperallergic, and other journals, and has held fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the James A. Michener Foundation, and the University of Iowa. Christopher teaches at the College of St. Benedict / St. John’s University, in Minnesota.