KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
Kristen D. Scott
At Pelican Cove
(For Sam)
The sound of muscular waves
overwhelms playing children, ergs merge
with seagull huoh-huoh-huoh’s, moonstone
gatherers, and anxious parents.
On the boardwalk, your eyes spy a slender
blonde, ever an aficionado of female body language.
I am jealous, but then your eyes alight on her cranky
toddler. In an instant, you net toddler and mother,
hands, eyes, and throaty Midwest voice.
Ah, my Lebanese Sinbad with loose, khaki, cargos!
Families, seagull’s, and crashing waves unify
for your performance… entranced
I couldn’t wait for bed, to ride that moment, shout,
he is mine!
And you were …
for the turn of a screw
a setting of sun
a strum of oud,
a dervish whirl…
for as long as you could be anyone’s,
even children, crashing wave, gull, toddler, and mother.
Bare
sometimes aching settles
in like a goose-down quilt,
silencing all voices it inhabits.
Once upon a time, I heard
children here, little maidens
chattering
my lover chitchatting
with them, winking
when I watch. In the corner,
the hope of my orchid dies.
Through the final fallen bloom,
I fall with it. Under
the quilt.
Under a patchwork
of neglect.
Kristen D. Scott is a six-time nominee of the Pushcart Prize in poetry for six works from her 2014 collection OPIATE. She is an award-winning essayist for her work on Federico Garcia Lorca and his books the Divan del Tamarit, Poet of the Deep Song, and essay, "The Duende."
She has published in several anthologies, newspapers, and ezines, including four front covers from Nacional Newspaper in Albania, the San Diego Poetry Annuals, Nomos Review, Perigee, Alesbuyia, and published two poetry collections from Garden Oak Press: LIAISONS (2012) and OPIATE (2014). She has been translated into Arabic, Albanian, Türçe, Bengali, and Italian.
Scott is currently the Editor-In-Chief, founder, and web designer of KNOT Magazine.