portrait of the edge of the atlantic, as seen in a dream

Poetry by ​​Lip Manegio

the tide is coming in but the salt still gapes
far enough for the sandbars to watch
with all those snails in their upturned shells, all those eyes
 
the sky is ruby violet, clouds warping themselves into
shapes children’s small hands point out, tracing
the curves of every beast they imagine themselves to be
 
the shore is frothing, pollen covering every wave
offering feast for any honeybee that would dare wet its wings,
dare its own body against the rest of the world
 
& maybe i know what it is to risk a drowning just to taste
such a salted sweet, to fly into a wavebreak hoping just for gasping breaths;
 
so i am every grain of pebble begging
for an undertow to smooth it;
 
i am the gulls singing out cries, wailing over the greening sun,
all the unburying left to do, the light already burned;
 
i am learning to dead man and call it a survival,
hold my breath until my lungs become buoys
 
& here is where survival is not a marvel,
but merely as natural as every moon pulled current,
merely us, jellyfishing into each new sunrise
 
here is somewhere where the earth will swallow
only what it wishes to give home to
where every muck flicked thigh is just another promise
that the water will come back and rinse it clean
 
here is somewhere where queer is not a brining dreamscape
but instead an ocean turning over in its sleep

Lip Manegio

Lip Manegio is a trans, queer nonbinary poet based in Boston where they are working towards a BFA in creative writing at Emerson College. Their work has appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Puerto del Sol, The Minnesota Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. They are the author of We’ve All Seen Helena (Game Over Books, 2019).