Outbound
Down the mainsail. The sheet doesn’t cut the callous, not anymore. Boom vang clatters late at night as we squat near the propane heater, huddling against each other under a blanket, our musty shoes shoved under the high-low table. Dawn forces breath into the water, a short exhale, not a chortle. Gulls whine for fish. Nothing landbound for miles. It’s just us. The snakeskin ocean barely heaves, hull longs for heel. Thin lashes of pop-eyed sun reach through morning’s paper-white pale. Hoist.
grumpy sails
glass sea
slow water big sky
© Jennifer Karp
Jennifer Karp‘s poetry appears or will appear in the San Pedro River Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Writers Resist, Festival For Poetry, and others. She won Honorable Mention in the 2023 Steve Kowit Poetry Prize and was a winner of the 2022 San Diego Reader poetry contest.
The Loch Raven Review 