Poetry:
Ditsky, Floyd Skoot, Mark Kirby, Norita Dittberner-Jax, John
Floyd Skloot Shoreline Life We lived seven years on a strip of sand. a barrier island shifting toward land in the hub of storm-borne overwash fans. Montauk sat like a saddle on the south...
...1 think it was...
...Norita Dittberner-Jctx II Was Like This As a young girl it was like thisslipping out of the cabin in early morning down to the dock, easing the rowboat out onto the Apple River, rowing, the perfect intersection of paddle and water, muscles pulling in waves not waking anything, not the fish my father would catch, not the life in the cabin (nay mother starting the oatmeal now) not even wanting to waken myself from this dream of water...
...Or got forgetting to ease down...
...at last, a home that could fade into air and water...
...Ho found us...
...where the fire appears...
...The sound of surf was always in our ears...
...Squalls fierce from their wide fetch could transport a ton of sea front in one bad season, scouring all landmarks...
...flourishes of other lives arc brought here to be purified: a book, a sheet...
...Sunlight is...
...Steep dunes and suit marsh grass signalled how fragile shoreline life could be...
...I come in bravely Now from twilights in July, my arms And legs blotched red with what Tomorrow will see gone...
...And in time the bites went away Beneath their pink crust...
...Each new year, walking the profile of a beach braced flat for winter, I surveyed gray breakers building bulk for spring...
...I spent summer hours repeating the mad dash from a dune's toe into chest high waves, losing my breath the instant I needed it most...
...On Fire Island, low dune lines from Kismet to Lonelyville made the risk of flooding greater...
...Montauk sat like a saddle on the south fork's backbone, cut off from the tides by bluffs...
...sustain communicants like these, whose benign patience is rewarded with an outward sign...
...This was where my father moved us after his city life ended...
...Our place was marked by slow losses to windswept bayside rollover...
...Creatures of dreaming fire round as a white pearl wait, their naked piety an end to desire, their spent time turning to wood...
...John Ditsky Bites Calamine lotion...
...But I writhe Abed with what I cannot scratch Or sake with lotion, will away...
...returning to stone...
...And we want to wear its mark...
...a ball gather home the voluptuous heat and bum in rows, each thing, each being, an offering...
...like a votive flame...
...after all our sole source of life...
...Here by the ocean with its sufficient music geniuses and lovers lie down together to be tongued by the fire...
...It is thirty, Forty, years ago-and I think As I take my time in slapping dead The black mother on my forearm How long it's been since I've felt That itch I couldn't stand to leave Unscratched...
...All of the world's edges...
...Mark Kirby Confirmation Sunbathing, like poetry is a communal art practiced often in private...
...Cobble beaches at Hither Hills were signs of ravage made clearer still by homes toppled into Shinnecock Inlet...
...feel the weight of its hand...
Vol. 115 • July 1988 • No. 13
