Flood Watch
Kathryn Merwin

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The fact of the highway
cuts your silhouette

in the black ash of my cigarette –
it’s some time in December, the late shift,

so many pine trees, a city
made of mist. I untie my bootlace

and shape your mouth

into the stars – the golden wink
of your crooked teeth

fills the softest hour of night. Our astral tongues
speak star-language – ghost stories

of a silver river in Georgetown, fingers
of fog splayed on glass. I think you could have been

a constellation – angular, cold, one that hangs
above the Blue Ridge,

like holes in the ceiling
that let in such little

light, a tessellation
of so many exit wounds.

 
 
 

About the Author: Kathryn Merwin is a native of Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, Natural Bridge, So to Speak, and Sugar House Review, among others. She has been awarded the Nancy D. Hargrove Editors' Prize for Poetry, the Blue Earth Review Annual Poetry Prize, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is currently pursuing her MFA through Western Washington University.

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