Tuesday poem #686 : Dagne Forrest : Body of Sand Cento

 

 

At the water’s edge—as at the edge of ruin,
the sorrow of laundromats, of so much noise,
newsprint and smoke dispelled by the wind—
the sand was not what they said, but
alive and fresh, a wish made flesh. 

Other, other
                               where have you gone?

Now you smell like salt,
like something hidden and curled
at sea. You, on the road:
dim yellow, like despondent gold,
every step is a step into absence. 

Other, other
                               where have you gone?

The bay keeps bluing and re-bluing.
Water tastes differently every time,
the copper poison on my tongue sweet:
this is breath again,
oyster-pink lungs, a body of water. 

Other, other
                               where have you gone?

You who were and were not,
you must continue
shaken or stirred, bright or broken,
in the teeth of
 the memory of air.

 

 

The lines in this poem are from: “Faintly, with Falling Stars”, Carl Phillips; “Los Angeles, Fin de Siècle”, Maurya Simon; “A Body Drawn By Its Own Memory”, Kate Colby; “Children, The Sandbar, That Summer”, Muriel Rukeyser; “Call as You Will”, Todd Boss; “The Disappeared”, Cecilia Vicuña; “Night Study”, Kelly Gray; “After Antonio Machado”, Robert Pinsky; “A Single Woman’s Bedroom”, Yi Lei; “NOCTURNE”, Hila Ratzabi; “Moon Pull”, Carlina Duan; “Off the coast of Ithaca”, Fiona Hartmann; “Water”, Eloise Klein Healy; “dreamsongs for two working feet”, jessica popeski; “Inhibit”, Kate Sweeney; “Sono”, Suji Kwock Kim; “Mixed Media”, Kathryn Petruccelli; “Character Questionnaire for a Stranger (You) Who Enters a Poem”, Charlotte Pence; “Never to Dream of Spiders”, Audre Lorde; “Tone poem 4”, Bob Hicok.

 

 

 

 

Dagne Forrest’s poetry has appeared most recently in The New Quarterly, Funicular Magazine, Rust + Moth, Tar River Poetry, Rogue Agent, Prism International, and elsewhere. In 2023 she won first prize in the Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest run by The New Quarterly. She was selected as a finalist in the 2025 Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize by Maggie Smith. She is Managing Editor of Painted Bride Quarterly. Her chapbooks include Un/becoming (Baseline Press, 2025) and the forthcoming Falldown Lane (Whittle Micropress, 2026).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan