by Shira Dentz
Red sunset interspersed with Saharan sands
that wind carried over the Atlantic,
red like the Creature’s ear grazed,
up top, against its white sunlit shirt.
Red like tycoons billowing
buffoons flying high on greed.
A storming sky and ocean
are identical twins so your nostrils stir
to take in salt spray from a lone sky.
You want to linger in the horizonless dolphin silver
away from what’s constructed, like time,
stationed at this light signaling red.
Shira Dentz is the author of five books including Sisyphusina (PANK Books), winner of the Nassar Prize 2021, and two chapbooks including Flounders (Essay Press). Her writing appears in many venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, VOLT, New American Writing, Brooklyn Rail, Lana Turner, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, Diagram, Colorado Review, Idaho Review, Allium, Court Green, New Orleans Review, Puerto del Sol, NELLE, Nat. Brut, Apartment, Annulet, Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Poetry Society of America, and NPR, and she’s a recipient of awards including an Academy of American Poets Prize and Poetry Society of America's Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Awards.