Seized
- Seized
I tell no one how I compose my days—the calendar of sandand the math of its accumulation, arc, and crashing. This day,
pouring into me. Another made of wingspan, made of rescue.I move over rocks toward the rats. The ochre skyline endlessly
cradled by the water. For a week, I have cleaned sound in the morning,the water taut by shifting. What keeps demolishing and drifting
is what I learn, what loitering. At low tide, seaweed rots and knitsto benches, and I wear my knotted sweaters. By the iron-skinned beach,
a bright blue boat I never rode is waiting. I fold firm stonesinto the belly of my fleece jacket, wanting the weight of what
I touch. Nothing happens as I’m looking. I don’t raise my eyesuntil the terns cry, until the litter is an effigy I’ve kept from drowning. [End Page 12]
Lauren Camp is the author of three books, most recently One Hundred Hungers (Tupelo Press, 2016), which won the Dorset Prize. Her poems appear in New England Review, Poetry International, Slice, The Seattle Review, World Literature Today, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Other literary honors include the Margaret Randall Poetry Prize, an Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award, and a Black Earth Institute Fellowship. She is the producer and host of Santa Fe Public Radio’s “Audio Saucepan,” which interweaves music with contemporary poetry. www.laurencamp.com.
