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2022 Ramon Feliciano Poetry Prize

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skinny dipping in mid-june, there are nightfishers on the beach

by Lily Darling

 

And the lights they use are red eyes staring back at us that blink in and out of consciousness from their judgmental tripods we run into the water with hands over our breasts, laughing as if there were some invisible crowd this solace after the storm that dredged up mounds of seaweed like piles of a woman’s hair, tangling in our toes and in this scene I would like to think that all of this island is a woman in the same way that god is (and all her ancient mothers call in the same song as the waves) “Let me stay here,” I want to say, in the thistle-whipped fire of the nightfishers’ red beams that vainly try to lure some greater force and the moon is cutting endless horizons into the sea’s languid face as the sand cups her cool hand against our wind-soaked shoulders, gently falling in love with the phosphorescence that turns our movements into soft and falling stars. A call, loud and mean, while flashes of light rise just over the beach grass to our backs the neighbor’s sons tumble towards us.
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