After Life
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- After Life
1.One lucent whorl of snail shelldissolving in a Maya blue lagoon:the high moon.
2.Riding sail off the backstay,a sloop in the bay keeps the wind face onall day long.
3.Between the sea and the shell,this island jungle-side lodging, our berthsmoored to swells.
4.Raffia rises on a finch,blur of wings and guava chin—thrashers, eaves,eggs his winch.
5.Nectar wasps unfurl cascadesof pink pompom boughs jibing in the trades.All fall blooms.
6.Bright rains pulsing hot as blood.Kingbirds thrill, tree-top sparklers in the flood’scrosslight drill. [End Page 30]
7.Dusk wells up from sea to sky.Dark spreads from the woods waves of life’s first voicefrogs let fly.
8.Midnight cove. A glimmer linerakes the surface. Bulldog bats trolling fishhook starshine.
9.Molten-sunburst cloud ignites.Ebony islands inlay gold foil seaschanging lights. [End Page 31]
CHARLES DOERSCH lives abroad as a digital nomad. His poems have appeared in The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, Edinburgh Review, and elsewhere. He teaches for the University of Colorado from his laptop, which is presently at Michoacán, Mexico.
