-
Issue 80
-
Editor's Note
-
POETRY
- Kelli Russell Agodon
- Heather Altfeld
- Derrick Austin
- Sam Barbee
- Michael Carman
- Adam Chiles
- Matthew Carter Gellman
- Stephen Harvey
- Holly Karapetkova
- Stephen Knauth
- Sara London
- Maren O. Mitchell
- Susan Musgrave
- D Nurkse
- Alison Palmer
- Doug Ramspeck
- Mitchell Andrew David Untch
- Joshua Weiner
- Jennifer Wheelock
- Ken White
- Emily Paige Wilson
Issue > Poetry
The Way the Stubborn Land Goes Soft Before the Sea
That month before my sister died I found her
on the beach; the foam, after a north wind
had blown all week, knee-deep.
These days when I walk to White Creek
I think of her, closer to death
than I was at the time, the way
she sat straight against a stranded log,
waiting. My father said look your last
on all things and I looked at my sister and back
at the sea, thinking this is what I will miss, too —
the surge upon the shore, the herds
of sandpipers jinking in and out as the waves
break and recede. Now each time I look,
I look my last, and then
I look again.