Like the forearms
of the fishermen,
Each docked boat
is tattooed across its bow:
Cinnamon Girl, Hazel B,
Lady Lou, Miner’s Debt.
Low mountains
encircle the marina, the rock
And snow of each peak
patched like molting caribou.
The sky dark
and still, clouds hitched
To the waning moon.
A net and diesel canister
Tangle in the surf,
rosemaled waves
Slapping the hull. Only
cannery lights at this hour—
Gilding barnacles,
mussels, your profile
As you turn
slowly in from the wind.
Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren is an MFA candidate in poetry and literary translation at Columbia University. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and a Hopwood Award, her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Two Lines and Asymptote.
