Arsenic Lobster poetry journal
Issue Eighteen
Winter 2008
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The Saint of Lost Sailors
Kyle Hemmings

She skirted along the reef, picking up conch,

fingering the apical whorls

that were her world within shells,

thought of cradling mollusk larvae,

or periwinkle in her palm.

Each morning, he appeared, up at sunrise,

the color of papaya whip or apricots.

Her grandmother always told her

the dry ones confer longevity.

He edged along the ocean, its tenuous sweep,

as if listening to its white-crested laughs,

and its blue wavering secrets.

Even from a distance, she thought,

he was a big brawny man,

with bruises for eyes. Always from a distance.


The air was clear, cool, a day without nets.

Then, now, here, there,

the sun strong, no clouds to filter it,

she imagined sea horses floating

to the surface of water. She stood,

watched him walk straight into the ocean.

Was he an angry veteran of the waves?

Was he a sailor, a salty dog

who had seen the world, already drunk by mid-morning?


She ran into the tide; his figure fading,

the massive shoulders like the back of some huge fish.

Wait, she cried, wait.

Then, as she swam out,

the bulk of her jersey and sweatpants

weighing her down, as his head submerged,

she realized she didn't know his name,

or for that matter,

what he always liked for breakfast.

About Kyle Hemmings

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