by Laura Reece Hogan

Grow ever tender lolling on the razor rocks, belly out.
Slow, curious, trusting. Graze the pickerel weed, water
hyacinth, turtle grass. The sea my blustery bed, sky
my blue forgiving. Mistaken for mermaid, misheard.
Fed a twisting tune, wrong song at the surface. Mis-
herded, propeller whipped. Grow hide over hurt. Scab
over ship strikes. Scar over spiral-cut scar. Meander silky,
like I own the star fields, trailing my own shredded
skin. Always the vulnerable swathes, mammaries, whiskers,
slashed tail. The venerable slacken it, know how to slide
softness into sea. They know themselves: elastic
and ephemeral. It is still alive, what you have left in me,
glinting with scars, gliding to mangrove leaves, to nova.

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Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Litany of Flights (Paraclete Press, 2020), winner of the Paraclete Poetry Prize, the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line Press), and the nonfiction book I Live, No Longer I (Wipf & Stock). Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Scientific American, RHINO, Lily Poetry Review, Whale Road Review, River Heron River, Cloudbank, DMQ Review, and other publications. She can be found online at laurareecehogan.com.