the raffish
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    • El Escondite Que Persigo Me Persigue
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My Husband Comments On
How I've Let Myself Go

by Holly Day

he tells me I remind him
of a beached whale lying in
bed in the morning I close my
eyes and imagine myself
being picked apart by the claws of
tiny sand crabs burrowed into
by thin red beach worms
gobbets of flesh ripped
 
from my carcass by flocks of sea gulls
luring even the raccoons down
from the stubby forest
following the shore. he asks me
if I feel ashamed of myself
and I don’t answer because
I feel dead already I’m
too busy
 
imagining the shock of
girl scout troops stumbling across
my massive corpse in the shallows
the feel of their tiny hands
on my body joined by the larger hands
of Greenpeace workers and passing
tree huggers as they try
to push me back
into the water
 
hoping somehow that this half-eaten
cold and lifeless body might
magically come back to
life and swim away if only
they could get me back
into the water.

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and The Tampa Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing).  

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  • Home
  • About
  • Stories
    • Ned's RV
    • The Beans
    • Cold Showers
    • All In
    • Sink or Swim
  • Essays
    • The Gift Of Water
    • Lessons from a Blind Serial Killer
    • Reconstructing Destruction
    • The Accountability Paradox
    • Water and Communities
  • Letters
    • Brian Ruiz to Justin McKee
    • Somehow Goodbye: Anna Bernal to Amos Bankhead
    • Letter From Mr. Happy
    • Sarah Vogel to Jesy Mulligan
    • Letter from the Editor
    • John Corley to Justin McKee
  • Poetry
    • John Corley
    • West Of Rolling Fork
    • My Husband Comments On How I've Let Myself Go
    • Yarn Ball
    • By The Delta
    • Chromatic Fragrance
    • Walking with Charles Dickens
    • Let's Talk
    • Kevin Casey
    • Couple
    • Espirit de l'Escalier
    • John Grey
  • Library
  • etc
    • El Escondite Que Persigo Me Persigue
    • House of the Cosmos
    • Collage #2
    • Watching
    • Armando Sketch
    • neuromodulation
    • Soo Jersey
    • truant griefs
    • the blue notes