This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from How to Cut a Woman in Half by Janis Harrington (Able Muse Press 2022).
Outer Banks Harbinger
Ranger’s hut boarded up. Our choice of campsites.
Car radio broken. Far too dark to notice
the dunes’ sea oats blown flat, a red pennant.
Newlywed Pete and I, Annie and her longtime
boyfriend Nick: each of us ignorant.
We struggle to pitch a mildewed family tent
as the ocean roars and the wind gains force.
All night we huddle within canvas walls
snapping like loosed sails; our youthful bodies
the only ballast. At dawn, storm spent,
we unzip the flaps, astonished to be alive,
sure God’s grace has secured our futures.
Soon they will graduate and marry at last.
My own husband will take a curve too fast.
Janis Harrington is the author of How to Cut a Woman in Half (Able Muse Press, 2022), a Finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Her first collection, Waiting for the Hurricane, was awarded the Lena Shull Book Award by the North Carolina Poetry Society. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she won the 2023 James Applewhite Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Journal of the American Medical Association, North Carolina Literary Review and elsewhere. She lives in North Carolina where she co-hosts a monthly reading series for a local independent bookstore. 
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