New Noah

by Erin Sweeten

Photo taken from a boat on rough seas. There's a bird and a piece of land jutting into view.

We travel the waters;
the waters travel us, trace us,
turn us dark and dank. The
trip from pupil to lip: traversed

by water. Is this the kind of baby
I can rock up on my hip,
tick tock, tick tock? I’m lost,

I’m tossed with the bathwater,
I’m the gutter’s daughter
for a day. It’s my job

to plot the demise of dawn,
to cotton to the facts of midday.
But this is the Lord’s day, the day

that undresses, desists, the due
date to get it all unlocked.

I’m seasick; sunspots
pock the sky. A bird’s laboring
down the sky’s track, nothing

but a speck of black,
my old turtle dove,
fat and coming from far off.

Erin Sweeten lives and writes in Phoenix, Arizona, where the desert keeps surprising her with its sparkle. She earned an MA in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and has published poems in Unsplendid, Cream City Review, and several other journals.

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