This selection, chosen by guest editor Jillian Fantin, is from If I Could Write You a Happier Ending by Mary Warren Foulk, released by dancing girl press in 2021.
Self Portrait with Erosion
Do you remember the sting of lemon sherbet on our chins sunburnt from hours playing in white sand? Riding bikes bought at end-of-season yard sales for $10 at best, their squeaky wheels and rusted shells? Mine was red, yours a pitch pine, and their pedals hummed and clanged making silhouettes across black tar. Seagulls cried in the slow breeze of ocean tides eroding Stone Harbor so gently over time. And Grandmother’s house on 106th Street one of the last standing, the only A-frame with its pebble lawn eclipsed by mini-mansions on undersized lots meant for humbler destinies. Bare feet on coarse damp morning beach, a long walk to the stone boardwalk, siblings breathing in the shared air to watch fishermen catch doomed crabs snapping against their mortality. Do you remember the soft taffy fresh from the loom of an open window spectacle, deep crowds waiting for a sticky taste? Later, with blistered skin we noted cracked sidewalks on the meandering route home. Sea-air stained bedsheets, a salty film covering weathered curtains dancing in dusty windows to shadow ceiling beams and imaginations. Background sounds of crashing waves— our childhood’s summer lullaby. If I were to visit now, how would it feel without you?
Mary Warren Foulk has been published in Fjords Review, The Hollins Critic, Pine Hills Review, Palette Poetry, Silkworm, and Steam Ticket, among other publications. Her work also has appeared in (M)othering Anthology (Inanna Publications), and My Loves: A Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press). Her chapbook, If I Could Write You a Happier Ending, was selected by dancing girl press (2021) for their annual series featuring women poets. Her manuscript Self-Portrait with Erosion was a finalist for the 2021 Gival Press Poetry Award.
Jillian A. Fantin is a writer with roots in the American South and north central England. They are a 2023 Sundress Publications Editorial Intern, a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet Fellow, and a 2020 Jefferson County Memorial Project Research Fellow. With writer Joy Wilkoff, they co-founded and edit RENESME LITERARY. Jillian’s debut chapbook, A Playdough Symposium, will be released this coming summer from Ghost City Press, and more of their writing appears in American Journal of Poetry, Homology Lit, Tilted House, Spectra Poets, Barrelhouse, and poetry.onl, among others.
- The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Dearest Water by Nancy Takacs - September 29, 2023
- Sundress Reads: Review of No Spare People - September 28, 2023
- 2023 E-Chapbook Contest Winner Announced - September 28, 2023