Wendy Taylor Carlisle
~
Marina
The catfish by the dock have grown thick
and lazy, hand fed monsters, saluting
the sandwiches we carry. Fierce mutations,
they move like nightmares beneath the plank
bridge we cross to the slick, teak cruisers,
the 30 foot masts, then vanish below gray,
splintered boards, mildewed day sailors,
scrape-hulled runabouts, in the water’s
foam and scum. Although we can’t see them,
we feel the glide and shudder, the pressure of them
under us. What swims in this water, swims in
our spit and piss, in what we toss, swims cloaked in
what we fail to value, all that hidden fortune
we careless sandwich eaters leave behind.
~
Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks and once lived in West Virginia. She is the author of two books, Reading Berryman to the Dog and Discount Fireworks (both Jacaranda Books) and has a manuscript forthcoming from MadHat Books in Fall 2015. Her most recent chapbook is Persephone on the Metro, (MadHat Books, 2014.)
~
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