A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE

by Shira Dentz

Source: Jacksonville Today

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.

SMALL THINGS

a factual account

by Shira Dentz

Brazilian geologists have found rocks comprised of plastic on an uninhabited island in the mid-Atlantic. —Plastic Soup Foundation, March 22, 2023

microplastics melt and cohabit 
stones on remote islands, 
melding new geology,
fashionably hybrid.
in short time the moon
will have its own time zone,
a part on our watch, as
seaweed blooms mid-ocean
wider than a continent
and lists towards shores,
still-hungry 

Shira Dentz is the author of five books including Sisyphusina (PANK Books); winner of the Eugene Paul 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, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Pleiades, New American Writing, Brooklyn Rail, Poets.org, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Poetrysociety.org, 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.