By Samantha Carpenter
Second Place of the David Middleton Poetry Award
The white-capped fists of the sea
pound the gritty white shore.
Hear the silver incantations sliver forth
creep up on the shore
twist slowly around your ankle
wrap around your knees…
Captains strangled by her silver-toned blade,
tucked away into
the beds of the sea—
yellowed marrowed pillows,
down of the purpling gray decreased—
away from lilac calls of the loved ones
buried beneath sandcastles
on that gritty white shore.
Seaweed twisted taut around your ankle,
and you wish her silver incantations would sliver
around your body and caress
the panic from your bones,
but instead the siren bows before you
then recedes into the sea.