by Jonathan Louis Duckworth
well you’ve done it now,
Lad,
think ye the ocean forgets
think ye
the ocean is like to forgive?
If every soul
is but a jetsam film
adrift
our words only the spume of life,
the mind, jealous & vain valves of the oyster,
a nacreous
vault for the spirit—
Now what’s your tongue gone & done?
I think,
I think your light’s
short a couple firkins’ lampoil.
Poor Winslow, who’ll teach ye when I’m gone?
Who’ll teach ye
to be a proper hand
of the dead’s manifest
when all you’ve ever known
were the living?
Jonathan Louis Duckworth received his MFA from Florida International University. His fiction, poetry, and non-fiction appears in Southwest Review, New Ohio Review, Gulf Coast, Bayou, Barrelhouse, Tupelo Quarterly, Superstition Review, and elsewhere, and his chapbook “Book of Never” was published by Finishing Line Press. He has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. He is a PhD student at University of North Texas.