I stay in skeleton light: the quiet thrill of undressing in the lantern room. Times I knew you were watching, or not. I lit the lamp, for you had come. Your glance was shoal, was shade, but I am a catcher of sailors and wrecked men. No siren, no voice to make men stay, but my light is blade. Deem me safe harbor, soft cove. When they jump ship at the sight of rock and roiling sea, I watch from the gallery, drinking whiskey. I trace the land, its fine edge and lilt. Its stagger. I arrive at loneliness as precise as X, as the center of a map, as latitude and longitude of shattered lens refract the huge blue burden of sea. Now I am the keeper and you, the lost. I fight to hold fast to the wide leg of lighthouse to prove oath. Prove luck, thick as kelp. But sometimes, hands slick on a buoy, I float to sea. The tide, how she brings me back, my many mouths and singing skin, to the lightship. To the vessel fictitious. To the best of all shores, the one combed with rain & shrouded in the scratch of the wind-whipped isle. O sharp harbor, where all my men, splayed open, lie.
Alysse Kathleen McCanna is the author of FishWife, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2024. Alysse’s poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from North American Review, The Rumpus, Grist, Poet Lore, Pembroke, Harpur Palate, and other journals. She holds a PhD in English from Oklahoma State University, an MFA from Bennington College, and serves as Associate Editor of Pilgrimage Magazine. She is an Associate Professor of English at Colorado Mountain College.
11/8 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Ruby Hansen Murray / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free
11/8 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Ruby Hansen Murray and local poet Judy Ireland / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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