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Volume 11 • Number 1 • Spring-Summer 2019

Kimberly Glanzman

Our Birthday, at the Beach

Like every year, I've returned. Mom sighs: it's your vice, as though mourning

equaled a lazy Saturday in bed or chewing ice.

What it is: our old game. Let the ocean slink in,

latch onto our ankles, last one standing --

Begin.

I shiver at the edge, a bundle of rocks / tongue / thoughts /

crumbs -- strung together with song,

skinned with grief. An empty, aimless hull, sails stripped

from me. Sunburn & bones, eyebrows like crows. I'm older / alive:

I win this round, and sink. Victory in defeat.

The ocean: one long drink of madness; the gulls a slick flock of greed.

The wind a mermaid's tail, muscle fleshed with light, licking at my cheek.

Every wave's another headstone on your grave. Every watery retreat: me losing you

& you leaving me.

Kimberly Glanzman is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Kentucky, where she serves as the managing editor of the New Limestone Review. Her poetry and fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Iodine, Innisfree, Kakalak: An Anthology of Carolina Poets, Sky Island Journal, and Stonecoast Review.