This selection, chosen by guest editor john compton, is from Nighttime by Marina Hope Wilson (Cooper Dillon Books 2024).
The Dark
He spells my name with an e instead of an i,
asks if 12 p.m. means day or night.
Everyday knowledge slides away.
He’s leaving before he leaves.
Lights out at six, lights out all the time.
So what if the world ends, so what
if the cities drown. Put your coat on
in any weather. Your preoccupations
become you. Eat the same breakfast
each day. The buttered toast is sour,
but nothing tastes the way it did.
Marina Hope Wilson is the author of the chapbook, Nighttime (Cooper Dillon Books, 2024). Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Massachusetts Review, $, trampset, Stirring, Bicoastal Review, and SWWIM Every Day. Marina is a 2024-25 Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Brown-Handler Artist-in-Residence. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, stepdaughter, and two cats, and she makes her living as a speech-language therapist. 
