We Want Your Writing.

So Many Dead

Bottles with the cap on, drifting on a sea
where nothing sinks and nothing opens.
Oceans, poisoned by a drink of water.

Press-on fingernails dance in curls
along the shore. Plastic swirls in eddies
of Pacific vast, muzzled phantoms in a pulp,
bobbing clear and blue and winking

in the light that was. Breath of rise and fall,
rippled six-pack rings. Once – I flapped
arms toward Mom, as Penobscot riptides

took me out. She waved from shore,
didn’t realize, I flailed. Loss, a shade
of summer. Salt’s taste is green.
Sixty years of tissue, gasping, I ride

crowded tides, lanternfish gone dark
in acres of Poland Springs, sealed
liters, a wail, choked on stale air.
 

Robert Carr

Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth, published in 2016 by Indolent Books, and The Unbuttoned Eye, a full-length 2019 collection from 3: A Taos Press. Among other publications, his poetry appears in the American Journal of Poetry,Crab Orchard, The Massachusetts Review, Rattle, and Shenandoah. Robert is a resident of Monmouth, Maine, where he lives with his husband Stephen. Additional information can be found at robertcarr.org

About

Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth, published in 2016 by Indolent Books, and The Unbuttoned Eye, a full-length 2019 collection from 3: A Taos Press. Among other publications, his poetry appears in the American Journal of Poetry, Crab Orchard, The Massachusetts Review, Rattle, and Shenandoah. Robert is a resident of Monmouth, Maine, where he lives with his husband Stephen. Additional information can be found at robertcarr.org