by Wren Tuatha
We turn to walk back to our blanket
and you mention dating profiles
that say love walking on the beach…
The visceral thing salt does to oxygen,
the roar, the stroke and muscle of waves.
Sensual sculpting of land.
Who doesn’t love the shore?
We joke about a profile of the sea-hater.
Listing reasons, we convince ourselves and leave.
The endless tasks of flushing sand from our lives
is proof, and we order Thai, mine mild.
We move on to a takedown of introverted
art spaces in hidden walkup lofts,
and I watch your dimples and lips sashay,
your fingers play piano on the cat.
But it’s the wording I love between us,
the way a notion is a plaything and then
a potion, the way hours hang in electric
suspension and fade, satisfied.
Let’s go back to the shore tomorrow,
give her another try
Wren Tuatha is a queer, disabled poet who earned her MFA at Goddard College. Her first collection is Thistle and Brilliant (FLP). Her poetry has appeared in Slipstream, Pirene’s Fountain, Seneca Review, Inverted Syntax, Hunger Mountain, NonBinary Review, About place Journal, and others. She’s formerly Artist-in-Residence at Heathcote Center. Wren and partner author/activist C.T. Butler herd rescue goats among the Finger Lakes of New York, where she is director of the forming Ithaca Poetry Center.
Hawaii Pacific Review 
A poem that causes me to pause and think, reread, and think some more, and then feel my time has been well spent is indeed a true poem. Thank you, Wren.