Faces
by a contributor
Jeff Burt
She beats the driftwood against her thigh
during a break in the squall, with branches and burls culled from
debris and dark conversation of wind, water and wood about her feet.
She shakes out sand and rubs the wood on her jeans to shine up
the wet pores looking for a face, and finds it, fumbling with a worn-out
burl, her snowy cheeks turned scarlet like twin fires on the beach of
the morning.
She has discovered a fable to create for her children.
I look, see nothing, and I shall not forget that when she left me that
morning the ducks and gulls and the sea turned from tone and sonority to
rattle and racket, the caesura and pause of the sand transformed to an
endless taut drum by the pounding of the surf.
I shall not forget how I could taste the cold metal my tongue had become
without her melting syllables, how wet and warm from the rain at the
river’s mouth I stood shoes hung about my shoulders, impoverished of
myth, looking at the torment of the sky, the storm in my mouth gone
quiet and dry.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California. He has published works in Thrice Fiction, Storm Cellar, Star 82 Review, and soon in The Cortland Review. He won the SuRaa short fiction award in 2011.
See more poetry from Jeff tomorrow.
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