What Waves Will Carry Back to You

new water in my mouth I rise
            as you and yours dismantle
the planet another Starbucks
            plastic cup in my cheek
another whale watcher
            searches for what wonders
breach my surface I hold America's
            history in my waves
tall ships roped at the docks
                        bodies chained at the neck
on my tongue British tea
            I drank that revolution
now commuter ferries dock
                                     in my teeth I could dredge bones
lay skulls at State and Atlantic
                         would you auction off a femur
a souvenir for your children
            to clutch on their duck boat tour
for now a Coke can a plastic
                                                straw I spit at Rowe's Wharf
a king tide my
waves return
                                                 what you discard

Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, editor, and Solstice MFA Program Assistant Director. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Homology Lit, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. He also received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2019. Quintin likes to post poems and writing memes on his Twitter (@qcollinswriter). He thinks the memes are funny sometimes, but that's debatable.

Great And Terrible

Oh Dorothy,
I thought as she swooned across poppies,
you’ll never smell home again.

That road dust won’t crowd your nose,
mixing with the crumble of wood
and approaching storm,

without first bringing the sense
of vertigo and drunken house.
When the stars blink in a solar breeze

you will picture a shimmer of pink,
an aurora borealis hovering impossibly
over barren Kansas fields.

You won’t find comfort in yellow
the way you once did in mud,
you’ll never love a cornfield

without imagining a ruined man.
Even after your rescue, a dream
behind fevered forehead,

you’ll spend hours and years
trying to reconcile a heart
and an empty soup can;

days and months in wonder
after the circus rolls through
and you’re left with the scent

of something wild and familiar.
You will lie on your deathbed
with the glimmer of rubies

behind your eyes, never knowing
how close you came
to a great and terrible man.

Amanda Crum is a writer and artist whose work can be found in publications such as Barren Magazineand Eastern Iowa Review. Her book of horror poetry, Tall Grass, made the preliminary ballot for a Bram Stoker Award nomination in 2020. She is also a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. Amanda currently lives in Kentucky with her husband and two children.