It is hard to know how to let go.
Cloud carries pink like paint
carries pigment. Each word, too,
enmeshed in the web of idea.

I walk with Amy along the beach.
The night blows its pinks in from the north.
As the sun sinks behind the furthest line
of ocean, the pinks settle
into the deepening distance
like a shucked skirt
slipped to the floor.
We walk into the wind.

Amy wears her mother's sweater.
It is not warm. It has a tissue in the pocket,
where one might presume
her mother expected to retrieve it.

We change direction and now
the wind penetrates our backs
like an old mistake that still aches.

The pinks are contagious. I want to surrender
myself here, let the flat mirror of beach break me.
Amy says it's the negative ions that feed us
what we need, make us exalted. But I think
it's the way absence echoes back at us
from the endless possibility of ocean.

Amy lifts her arms up over her head into the night.
Not prayer. Not flight. An opening.

She calls to her mother.

In this sky that includes beach and city,
past and present, dead and living,
pink is the language through which
Amy's mother answers.
Not because she has been called.
But because mothers will travel any distance
to see their daughters happy.

We stand with our backs to the city,
cloaked in the ocean's turbulent quiet.
There is a stillness. A kind of reverence among the pinks
as they settle in among the night's deeper darknesses.

We leave the beach and walk
into the night
as the final scarves of light
flare up and burn out.

—Sage Cohen

Laundry
I had told you
in the beginning.
I recall explaining
with clear, concise words,
laying it all out for you
like the next day's clothes
just so you'd know what you were getting into.

I am not crisp, cotton shirts;
I am not warm, wooly socks;
I am not sweet, silk panties.
My fibers are rough
and will scratch your skin.

So don't blame me
for not reading the tag.
It warned to wash my heart with like colors.
Caution: this garment may bleed,
may taint every other article in your life.
My blackberry blood stains
and you stand ruined,
cursing the day
you threw my love in with your whites.

— Laurie Gilfoyle

Water Beetle
I don't know anything about water beetles,
except that I am one
scooting through dark water
     peg legs
     peg arms
     peg fury
without wings.
What are wings when my will breaks?

I don't know anything about it,
except that I hover above
     shore shore of jewel
     shore of treasure
     shore of palette
drink salt water, curse the second hand,
wait for you to speak.
I wanted all of you,
every color of you, every vein,
to throw you into a jar of salt water
so I could use my will to shake you,
shake you because I can.
shake you because when things bond too tightly,
     I need to rip them apart.

I don't know anything,
except that without my jar,
     or pockets,
     or thought thread
     or ripe memory
I clutch you in one hand,
swim home, where you dry on a
napkin on my table; you,
a jewel dusted with salt, your
colors hidden under my effort.
me, wanting each moment
     to grow lichen.

I know nothing
except that I could die in your arms,
swim without fin,
wade knee-deep in soil,
shower in prayer candle wax.
I could die in your arms,
but only in your arms.

— Cristal Guderjahn

I Write Poetry to See If I'm You
I write poetry because we're always absurd, no matter what.
I write poetry rather than carry antlers through the street,
I have no gun and no knife anyway.
I write poetry to keep the labyrinthian sound of my own echo
in the roads of my head
from swallowing me.
I write poetry because the old oratorical rhythms of words in the
howling wind
make me feel more powerful.
I write poetry because shakti-birds fly from my fingers
when I point at the moon, a lifter of fingers to cloud-heavens.
A wise wilderness taoist
once taught me to fly himself;
He was my own "I"
and so I write poetry
to imitate his language.

—Walker Brents

Losing It
The dream said I couldn't have the baby or the worm.
So I swam against the current in my loose skirt.
Expectation unraveled to ocean.
Destination was many generations deep.
It was a surprise, my body's devotion.
Making its way forward
as if my survival mattered more
than what I could no longer carry.

— Sage Cohen

San Francisco Reader seeks fiction and poetry to publish in future issues. For consideration, please send your submission via the United States Postal Service to:
     Submissions
     San Francisco Reader
     P.O. Box 460418
     San Francisco, CA 94114
If you'd like for your work to be returned, please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope. No responsibility is taken for submissions that are lost, rejected or otherwise unceremoniously manhandled.