The pilot boats that
blinker the bay
await employ
envoy
greater ships to usher home
to sleep in slips and you
slide in beside me, to
chart the swells.
So standing stern we number
siren panes like
lighthouse lanterns, making
bright the wakeful yards between us
and the ferries
now fareless
for which we once
spared sums untold.
Now darken this flag, these
imposter squares and in signal
bend red light
over white
on our bows that want to break
in deeper seas: in here
you say, the narrow mouth may
swallow us whole.
About the author
A native Texan, Carly Wray has slept at a bus station in Tralee, a monastery in Venice, and many a Gulf Coast rest stop…
Read the full bioIssue 05 · June 2009
Table of contents
- From the editors
- Poetry
- New Orleans, Louisiana by Chad Heltzel
- Passage by Carly Wray
- Continued by Laurie Byro
- Chapatis for the Drive-By by Ceci Mourkogiannis
- Letter Written on a Paper Crane by Dave Rowley
- Escalators by Esther Greenleaf Murer
- Two Poems by R L Swihart
- Cordoba by Audri Sousa
- Shiprock by Stephen Lefebure
- The National Museum by Crystal Gibbins
- hagiography by the Jordan by Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé
- The Iceberg Vacation by Robert McDonald
- Automobilia by C.B. Anderson
- Postcard Prose
- On Naxos by Janice D. Soderling
- What I Know of You, Pippa Bacca by Angela Hamilton
- Praha by Kelly Luce
- Attending the Tasting by Sarah J. Sloat
- Travel Notes
More from The Journal
- Postcard Prose
By Kelly Hill
Trying to wrap my mind around living on a tropical island for thirteen years and never once seeing the ocean, I stumbled through my Indonesian vocabulary to say, It’s good. It’s big.
- Travel Notes
By Sandra Larson
A dinosaur dangles over my grandson at the Field Museum near a pink thumb that pops into the prom picture of my granddaughter dressed in strapless red leaving her house in Medina …
- Travel Notes
By Megan Hallinan
The bill in question is actually a 2,000 West African franc note, and it’s the equivalent of about four U.S. dollars. A helpful sum, really, but as I clutch the weathered crinkle in my sweaty palm, its value feels as dirty as the grime that is undoubtedly being transferred to my fingers.
- Poetry
to Egg and Berry brewery, to the pack / of Czechy words I made but didn’t work / in this pink town. I’d readily go back / to your best spots, the unfired gun, that perk //
- Poetry
By Jason Warren
And if the neap tides of my beauty / sadden him, I cannot help it: / I hang high, the waxy night light …
- Poetry
By Anastasia Vassos
Three thousand ancestors ask how I straddle / the sea, a foot on either shore. //
Read more Poetry or Postcard Prose