Treading Water
I came to the beach
but did not shave
my legs I used to
think my body was
a torch held
out before
me all gazes
drawn like muted
wings in the waves
I lose all sense
of time spitting
salt and swallowing
it still how
could anyone fall
asleep with their eyes
open the planes
above the shore dragging
banners for buffet
specials and parasailing
tours seem elegiac
for what
I don’t know every
day feels like a great
goodbye the sun
a swallow of hot
tears whose job is it
to worry
about the cemeteries
in heavy
rain hurricanes
picking up whole
oceans whole oceans
suspended
in the sky how do we make
love like two storms
one riding the currents
over land east
another offshore
born turning
inland to meet each
slowing in
their angry
embrace the umbrellas
crack in the wind
whole families walk
their slow legs
back in
against the rip
tide to the beach because it begins
to rain a light
rain they don’t want
to get wet salt stings
an eye but we don’t
call an eye
a wound I find my
feet still fit
my prints in the sand
I arrive back
on land looking for
my I
I think it’s there
in my spine
holding up my
weight the everything
else I almost expected
to have been
lost at sea
Sweat Bee
some days I’m better
for my anger more
prepared for my pain
for my pain more
prepared for instance
I knew the storm was coming
yesterday for the way
the screws tightened
in my heel their heads
just visible under my
skin the dog’s crying
for all the fireworks
though his nose’s to the air
for the grill the hiss
of meat we try not to
imagine with names
like Bluebell and James
Dean sometimes I think
that all these 4th of July
parties are really to celebrate
each person as a country
each unto their
own I am nostalgic
for a time when my friends
would have said sick
burn after an insult
we used to go
to the skating rink
and play redlight greenlight
whoever got caught
moving after redlight
had to sit out
until allskate I almost
hit a bird today
because it ran across
the road instead of taking
wing the most patriotic
I get these days is loving
the smell of a struck
match and almost
reveling in a sweat
bee’s sting while I eat
watermelon at a picnic
table rafted together
from dry-rot and some
semblance of family after
that summer of wheels
and nachos and pinball
quarters the owner of Skatin’
Jakes set the rink on fire
for the insurance
payout I hope the cost
wasn’t too high I hope
the cost wasn’t too
low it’s not a fire
this flame inside me
it’s a temper
Emilia Phillips is the author of two poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, Signaletics (2013) and Groundspeed (2016), and three chapbooks, most recently Beneath the Ice Fish Like Souls Look Alike (Bull City Press, 2015). Her poems and lyric essays appear widely in literary publications including Agni, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She’s an assistant professor in the MFA Writing Program and the Department of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her third book, Empty Clip, will be published by the University of Akron Press Spring 2018.