Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Andy McGuire

Alone in the kitchen,

I think of the word Kalamazoo

for as long as it takes

to move past

thoughts of little league, cold

as Minnesota memories in Texas,

past the dumb desire

to want a picture of myself

in left field,

because for that I would need a baseball

diamond and a glove,

not to mention a camera

with a father attached.

Past the slow fireworks of October

and weather that causes sleeves to turtle

over hands,

because they did me no good

crossing the Davis Strait

aboard the Lyubov Orlova,

unable to shake

the serpents of early Arctic maps, looking out

over teething whitecaps

with the intensity of a pro dart player

about to throw. I realized

I could slip away

unnoticed, a thousand clicks

north of where the trees and soil split

over creative differences.

After I left the Orlova, she broke it off with a tow

line unable to hold

the whole of her, opting

for a derelict life in the North Atlantic,

where she is now

believed to be relieved of her buoyancy.

Only the righteous would linger

in a landscape that makes you feel like the first

and last speaker of a language.

Martyrdom has its disadvantages.

I lock my life goals

and death drive

together in solitary

and watch them get their Stockholm on.

Because I have never been

to Kalamazoo. It sounds like a cheap place to shoot

over breakfast, holding the thrill

of the thought of something surfacing, but not.

Because only on a sleepy avenue

where they still say Yes

and Okay

and Alright then

can I score my civil war

in peace.

Cast in a sunbeam that would just as soon bleach

my bones, I airlift

my last spoon of cereal and brace

for the breach, ready to seat

my breaker, arms

crossed like the opposite of Christ.

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Jaime Forsythe

Evidence I am still here:

dots and dashes through wet grass.

The balcony’s squeak, a bell-shaped

shadow. A beating locket. The body’s

slow drip. (Also, the smoke

detector in the garden, the unhinged

gate, reflection in a filled bucket).

Still halfway submerged in a slow dance dream

with a stingray, enveloped by floppy wings.

Smokestacks, shipyard, sky all striped.

The bridge was plucked apart yesterday

and carries buses dyed pink this morning.

I am forever trailed by a hovering crow,

low aircrafts. The creatures

in the harbour catch
my eye before going back under.

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Jamie Sharpe 

I mourns sweethearts sins.

I begin, without regard

to grammar. I end,

hoping you won’t read

C.P. Cavafy. Sunrise,

Sunset. Perry Como,

seventh son of the seventh

son, your day dawns on

a vainglorious anagram.

Marry Wikipedia’s sloppy

seconds: Brit painters;

Greek poets; Yank singers. 

My monster brides, you were,

you people, a kind of solution.

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Phoebe Wang

Dressed in our Sunday best we came to pay

our respects but found you out to sea, with no time

to tide over. We’d hoped to share some

idle chat about the fishmonger’s son,

who’s starching his collars in hopes of capturing

the eye of the parson’s daughter

the way the uneasy waves snag the scowl

of the lidless sun. We wanted to swim

alongside your trawlers and drifters, to see you

through all weathers, and to be seen.

Many times you’ve come close to catching us

while schooling cod, skate and Dover sole

on their tacit fates, hauling your worth

in weight towards scalloped dinner plates. We get that

you’re keeping one eye on your shrinking quotas.

That you can’t afford to look away. The light burns

through the lost years the way unpleasant

facts can sear the shell-shocked,

the daydreamers. But you’re wide awake.

There’s a way out of this tangled net.

We’ve already given ourselves up. Now your turn.

We know there are men you call monsters

but we can’t fathom how you tell them
apart from those creatures you claim as kin.

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Susan Glickman

“Come unto these yellow sands”

The monsters splayed on this sulphurous beach

are nothing like those whose tentacles

slither languid through your dreams,

nor those hulking hunchbacked

down rainwet cobblestones, nor those 

whose shadows slide under bedroom doors 

whispering to grey brethren in the closet. 

These creatures intend nothing 

but the truth, their gaping mouths amazed

by daylight. They were safer where they were,

the weight of the sea pure benevolence.

Here, now, oxygen shreads their tender gills

and the sun laughs.

It is exposure that deforms them.

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Nancy Jo Cullen

The day opens its gaping mouth,

(It is as reasonable to ask why not as it is to ask why.

My father said that and he is dead now thirty-three years,

my oldest brother nearly nine, my mother eight, my former partner ten,

and my sister’s son, just three years.

But you could just as well say for all eternity.)

the leaves vibrate, bracing for their abscission.

We are so tiny.

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Matt Robinson 

Apology’s often a thin, callous eye—an aperture’s squint-
slurred re-framing of the arc of a day’s bright complaint
with its breaker. It’s a matter of naming. A smudged sliver of
a thought’s cataract; a wry pseudo-erasure, a narrative
weaning. Like love, a fervid translation—a fraught, stuttered attempt 
to mitigate loss or gloss over the making of meaning; a review
of what has or hasn’t been said, of what’s been cut
on the bias or cut to the quick. It’s an ad hoc sheet music—loosely 
transcribed—of an elegant logic’s new bridge. Or chorus. Or verse.
Even worse, the time signature’s as good as gone, clearly missing—
heart’s tacky, over-used cardiac snare the only thing there
to establish what we’d wish as a rhythm to serve as this fugue’s counterpoint, 
to punch up this now jaundiced tune—this near-sighted, one-sided
limning of what it is we’ve been living. 

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

by Tanis MacDonald

Take this simple test to see

if you should spend more time

in the natural world. Name ten

kinds of local trees. Ten local

birds. Ten naturally-occurring

local flora. In what phase is

the moon tonight? When did you last

see a sunrise? When did you last

sleep beneath your canoe on a tiny

island? Natural. Do you believe in

the power of sunrise to dispel

sandflies? How high did you jump

when the morning bugled in with

a dog’s head and the torn

remains of a net? How quickly did

you launch your canoe? Have you ever

fallen from a great height in a cloud

of wax? Are those your legs disappearing

into the water? Are you now or have you

ever been dumped

overboard for the insurance? How close

are the monsters? Test to see. How much

do you believe the scholarly

theory that the monsters are just

fish? How will you

string your rod? Name ten

successful lures. Are you sun blind?

Are you giving up the ship or just

going down with all hands? When were you

last boarded, press-ganged, seized

amidships? Are you a Jonah or just  

not wanted on the voyage? Is that

an albatross around your

neck or are you just happy

to sea? Take this. Why did you

bless the water snakes? Where did you first

meet them?  Were you drinking water water

everywhere? (By gum, that’s mutiny,

sir; that’s entrapment.)  Did you lure

the monster with your shapely pegleg?

This island’s mine, by Sycorax

my mother; that’s her swimming

starboard. Stand up now, grip the

gunwhale if you must, and show
some goddamned respect. Simple.

Sunrise with Sea Monsters

or Turner’s Morse

by Conor McDonnell 

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