Honorable Mention: Desire, That Fish, Swims Up Against My Ankles

[img_assist|nid=10067|title=Nissa Lee|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=250|height=304]That man’s voice echoes

in my head, out in the fog
against the creak of boat hull.

I ache from his closeness
from his sudden disappearance.

The shore is steps away
but I keep swimming

my own notes spilling
onto the new moon’s reflection.

He’s made an outline of me
so I’m wanting to be filled

by fingers, by ink, by the serrated
edge of a fishing knife. Here

my rib-bottoms feel the catch
and pull, ripple of hunter green.

I feel how I am tied to that voice
how it is drawing me out

next to the tackle box. He hums
viscous air into my gills.

The moon sharpens to a sickle
when he raises his arm.

Nissa Lee lives and teaches in southern New Jersey. She holds an MFA in poetry from Rutgers University in Camden, and her work has been published in Raleigh Review, Requited, and Wicked Alice.

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