Category: Poetry

November’s first dawn, 
no one has yet decided to walk the foreshore. 
The Sun teases his arrival behind the horizon 
with an assortment of vapor: 
gold and silver rings 
so the Ocean may don her favorites. 
Amidst this proposal 
from behind sand dunes, shadowy bodies emerge—  
was this the Mist’s trick?  
Two men pulling a rowboat 
laugh as their feet stomp over to the coast— 
they bear brittle oars the Ocean will use to pick her teeth. 
The bow cuts into her flowing flesh, 
paves a jagged path across her breasts. 

In the distance, a young girl approaches the tide. 
No one else is here for fear the Ocean 
will take her rage out on them. 
Before the frigid water can claw at her ankles, 
she dives in, swims hard. 
Her head buoys above the Ocean’s meniscus. 
Treading water— 
a primordial world below her kicking feet: 
ashamed experiments, ill-formed bastards— 
barely time to breathe between 
crest after crest washing over her head, 
drowning in the Ocean’s anguish. 
She dives, twists, and contorts in the callous embrace 
until she reaches shifting sands. 

The Ocean is the Moon’s disciple. 
She made her in her image. 
Yet while the Moon is offered poetry and prose, 
the Ocean receives piss and plastic. 
The girl brings her prayer, 
bows down at her feet, 
offers herself. 

Seagulls scurry across damp sand recently revealed 
after the Ocean pulled her skirt back in. 
One takes off over the crowd. 
None follow. 
The lone gull’s wings beat currents 
that move the restive Ocean. 
In turn, the waves gyre beyond control— 
where’s that girl in the undertow? 

A morning angel made anew— 
baptized in icy, boiling blood— 
breaks through thick floes, 
soars over the Atlantic. 
Finally, the Sun has risen.

I hit the lottery on my birthday. 
Two-dollar ticket 
four-dollar payout. 
I laughed. 
I finally had the upper hand 
on the devil. 

It wasn’t until that billion-dollar jackpot came around. 
I was freshly twenty 
despite feeling broken in. 
Craving more, 
my mother sent me into the convenience store—  
taxed lung cancer, 
canned heart failure, 
shiny, money-wasting cards 
you have to scratch with raw fingernails— 
and I found myself in a line, 
listening to stories of what people are gonna do with it. 

I used to do that. 
I was six years old  
my parents fantasizing about fortune, 
so we could all have a little more convenience 
a little more privacy. 
If we could be a little more fortunate. 

I bought the tickets my mom wanted 
and something for me too; 
A two-dollar scratch off— 
A fantasy that I could beat the devil 
who hypnotized those I love—  
My stubby nails screamed 
as latex ink compounded underneath them 
that would not come off for a few washes. 

There it was: nothing. 

I’d lost my leg-up 
and down to my knees I fell. 
Held in a chokehold of dreams, 
I thought I could beat him once more. 
To thumb pennies into his eyes, 
break glass, 
burst eardrums 
with the shrill of my victory. 

This will be the last time I meet him 
I dare not break our tie, whatever the odds.

“Miss Temple, why do you read by the inlet where the whales die?” My fourth-grade student cried. April 10^th 2020, I plunged back into my natural habitat. Gazing over the steel inlet rail, I observed an anomaly. Translucent ripples ripped into my quaint Manasquan seashore. Unripe sea glass nor plastic debris littered the dog beach bend. The water forced me to be reflective; typically, the teal tint tainted and obscured our interaction. Three weeks of required absenteeism: Covid, you were a killer of people, but a healer for nature. Our forced reclusion reduced pollution’s inclusion.  

Engines are silenced. 
No boats bother the blessed sea. 
Waves sing gleefully.  

Hardly three years later, we are worse than pre-disease. Speculations of new disruptions disseminate on the internet. Wind turbines, oil spills, reckless ships, a plethora of possibilities could be to blame. Nevertheless, we humans can be inhumane. Carcasses carried away, creating momentary concern. News outlets report that human contacts may have caused 43 whales’ deaths in 2022. The Snapple bottle lying next to the recently deceased whale should snap us out of our ignorant delusions. Our reemergence shouldn’t have been an imposition, placing the balance of nature in another untangling food chain condition.  

Engines igniting— 
Why bother the blessed sea? 
Waves sing, mournfully.

A coffee cup next to warm brewed tea. 
Does the herbal bag remind you of me? 
Grounds pass your filter, grind between my teeth.  
Pleasure-stained smile with pride underneath.  

Two bodies flow with beautiful contrast.  
The river’s impact on a stream grows fast. 
What happens when a rock gets thrown our way? 
Wither it down, we can mold it like clay. 

My stars wide awake in your sleepless night. 
How does the Moon shine without the Sun’s light? 
Hues of dawn fight to find their own place,   
But Calcite and Quartz mix together with grace. 

Sweet Lover Boy, we are nowhere near one.  
If we were the same, how would that be fun?

My hand clamps the handle,
ready to pull. 
Resistance hits my arm. 
Why? Was it something I said? 
Did he not like the color of my sweater? 
Caramel and bleached stitching 
coming together, hand in hand. 
Or did my shoes remind him of another
who slammed him so hard 
that he never wanted to be touched again? 
The dulled look of his exterior, 
mixed gray and brown 
Found on the palette of a painter 
starved and craving affection. 
Is the door an artist 
Creaking to be seen?
A painting without a gallery. 
I place my palm upon his frame,
touching him as he touched me. 
Could he feel my warmth? 
Or is he heating up his handle 
warding away my fingers.  
Does he think I’m like the rest? 
The mildew film atop wood finish.
Maggots caught in the second coat of paint.
He should know best of all. 
The moon’s breeze can chill 
lovers, stuck in a foot of snow  
just as fast as the sun’s can scorch
eyes picking at his splinters.
I’ll let his metal burn me, 
maybe I’ll burn him back. 
Shared white scripted scars 
will make him understand.  
We’ve both felt far worse.

My heart is a muscle the size of my fist 
My teeth wear crowns that ache      
This brain makes it painful to exist 

My scoliosis spine is bent in a twist  
My eyes blacken from being awake  
My heart is a muscle the size of my fist 

My lungs are cigarette cancer kissed  
My knees are ready to buckle and break  
This brain makes it painful to exist  

My skeletal system can barely subsist  
My head sits on my neck like a mistake  
My heart is a muscle the size of my fist 

My tears evaporate into an ugly mist  
My bones shake like an earthquake  
This brain makes it painful to exist  

My thoughts are as unwanted as a cyst  
Telling me to Plath myself like a cake 
My heart is a muscle the size of my fist 
This brain makes it painful to exist

If I could have chosen the you you would become, 
the way I choose a perfect avocado, or a just-ripe cantaloupe 
from the produce aisle at Patsy’s Seaside Pantry,
I’d paint your eyes “Elderberry Blue,”  
the color on the walls of a long-abandoned beach house
where summers ago 
your childish laughter flew unbound
on sun filled breezes
until suddenly one summer 
your laughter bent, 
then shattered,
and your blue eyes grayed, 
like ashes, 
from the fires in your brain.

forty seconds of quiet. of nothing
but the thrumming of a too-big heart—
the sloshing of water up against
his moonless cavern. forty seconds
of a panic that subdues as fast as it came,
of peace unlike any other. past mistakes
and forgotten hopes, futile dreams
and desperate prayers.
silent wishes drowned out by the slow
suffocation of death. forty seconds,
then the gates are opened, the
flood widens, the space becomes
expansive, and the quiet peace of it
all is pulled under the current.

She watches from the doorway
as the room grows dark,
sleek silhouette in black
backlit by the bathroom light.

She slithers into bed,
viscous skin on my ankles,

her grasp coils around my neck.
My skin litters with goosebumps.
I toss and turn to free myself—
seized in a bone-crushing embrace.

She measures me, inch by inch,
readying to eat me whole.

Her teeth sink into my flesh,
forked tongue savoring the symphony
of my heart’s last beat. In her grip,
dreams and nightmares meet.

six little rooms aching remnants of a home
now they lack any signs of living
and there stand packed shelves drowning in boxes full of you

underneath us lies a hazardous basement
housing specialty wine, a dryer, uncharted diseases
and a decrepit parkway sign that stood for dreams – Born to Run

you are loved, here lies the proof in piles of tattered posters
we’ll walk through streets of fire
drive all night for you
tougher than the rest

your friends, your family, they’re all here
your mom’s scrapbooks, Obie’s collection of remembrance,
even Tex and Marion who got you started back in ‘65
(when you were still trying to be the Beatles)

their love stands here
in this little house with the tub overflowing
with magazines, your famous red baseball cap
and even a small group of people dedicated to you

it’s your house, even after you’ve gone, we’ll be here
on the corner of 10th, Cedar, and E