This selection, chosen by guest editor Kirsten Kowalewski, is from On Shifting Shoals by Joanne Durham (Kelsay Books 2023).
Bluefish Lane
The whole west side of the road
intentionally wild
protecting beach dwellers
from the munitions dump
across the river. No one tames
wax myrtle extending its long fingers
towards the street, leaving it to mingle
with sweetgum, oak, and the dead sticks
of something that rotted in last year’s hurricane.
You can lean a long time brown and broken
in the woods
and no one denies you
your place
Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press, 2022) and the chapbook, On Shifting Shoals, (Kelsay Books 2023). Other awards include Third Wednesday’s annual poetry contest, the Mary Ruffin Poole Prize, Prime Number Magazine’s Summer Challenge, and 3 Pushcart nominations. Her poems appear in Poetry South, Poetry East, Vox Populi, Cider Press Review, CALYX, Cutthroat, James Crews’ anthology, The Wonder of Small Things, and many other journals and anthologies. She lives on the North Carolina coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse.
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