Skylight, Shipwreck
Beneath beams barring
legs, stomach, breasts,
I have grown used
to the moon, its plaited waves
across my face. I wait
for dark, for the sky to split
in spikes of twilight
and the pulsing day
to fade. At night, the tide
of light is tender, slips of stars
washing smooth the buckled
walls and floorboards.
Above, joists groan and give,
like the bruised sides of a ship,
the house rotting
with me in it. I lie in its hold,
tossing, my eyelids oyster shells,
salted closed.
This selection comes from S.B. Ferguson’s chapbook River Rise, available now from Yellow Flag Press. Purchase your copy here!
S.B. Ferguson is a Ph.D. Fellow in Poetry at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “River Rise” is her first chapbook.
Leslie LaChance edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration, has curated The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications and written poetry reviews for Stirring: A Literary Collection. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, and her chapbook, How She Got That Way, was published in the quartet volume Mend & Hone by Toadlily Press in 2013. She teaches literature and writing at Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee, and if she is not teaching, writing, or editing, she has probably just gone to make some more espresso.
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