A selection from The Strait by Andrew Jarvis, finalist for the 2014 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize. The Strait explores sensory experiences gleamed from the natural environment, historic traditions, archaeological findings, and folklore of the Pacific Northwest. Jarvis presents a spiritual and honest landscape rich with images and metaphors that define our place in this beautiful, multicultural world and what it means to be human. The poems move from mystical shores to haunting woodlands, a multifaceted exploration of the imaginary and the real.
Surgeons
The beach is bleeding a fountain
like an old pen spewing sea ink.
They broke into its house, stealing
the arms and all of their suctions.
It hid under a rock, a place
to dine on crabs and fresh eel grass.
They found a way to poke at it,
a strong inversion of beach stone
and then a jab with drifted wood.
It requires bludgeoning to budge.
One boy lifted the underside
while one baited the over one.
This is a special way they found,
a way of moving the unmoved.
It bleeds aquamarine, as if
it died to pen their names for them.
And no one will know it, except
surgeons who bleed out all the blue.
The Strait
Poems by Andrew Jarvis
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