Janice D. Soderling



AT THE WATER'S EDGE
 

You swirl your whittled ribcage upside down,
little swimmer.
Paddling hands open and close in anticipation.

You call underwater; your tender skin
bare as an bark-stripped tree.

Attune your seashell ears,
little swimmer,
kicking restively in the night-gorged hollow.

What I try to answer is a kind of music,
sometimes more than that, like
the cyclic swell of the tide to crescendo,
like these impotent fingers that would lull you,
stroking through taut belly-skin.

A black ocean crests under silent stars.
We are all swimmers here.

Janice D. Soderling was born in the United States but lives in Sweden.  Her poetry and fiction has appeared one or more times in literary magazines of seven countries, among them: Beloit Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, Bottomfish, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Old Red Kimono, Tar River Poetry (U.S); The Malahat Review, Event, Fiddlehead, University of Windsor Review (Canada); Acumen, Staple New Writing, Other Poetry (England). Her poems were selected for the 1986-87 and the 1997 editions of Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry. A story was awarded first prize in the Glimmer Train very short fiction competition (summer 2006).









                                    

 

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