This selection, chosen by guest editor Alexis Ivy, is from Reacquaint by Allison Thung (kith books 2024).
Pebble
Further to the last time
we break each other’s hearts,
I go alone to the sea,
picking my way through
sunbathers at Killiney Beach
until I find solitude
beside a chain link fence.
By the water,
summer does little to
shatter the bone chill of the
sea breeze that seeks refuge in
every gap between my skin and
already unseasonable trench.
In lieu of the unsaid words
I should have shaken out of
my coat pockets last night,
I shake sand out
of my sneakers,
pressing a bare foot
against a glittering pebble
I want but will not take.
Overhead,
a lone gull concurs.
Allison Thung is a Singaporean poet. She is the author of Reacquaint (kith books, 2024) and Molar (kith books, 2024). Her poetry has been published in ANMLY, Sixth Finch, Cease, Cows, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions. Allison is an Assistant Poetry Editor at ANMLY. 
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks (BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. She is co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023). A recent resident of the Sundress Academy for the Arts, she lives in her hometown Boston, working as an advocate for the homeless, and teaching in the PoemWorks community.
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