Poems You Can Eat: Salt on Sea

by Stephani Cook

Salt on Sea

Dad thought it was a real beach–
the stripped storefronts said not.
Popsicles had once been sold, but
they’d gone to lunch 40 years ago.

AT
crests the water cracked, like hobos lurch,
fetid waves of a forgotten sea.
Skeletons beached on a salted shore, poor
fish sweat out by an old home.

THE
Algae pooled like lily pads,
loitered at the surface, stealing oxygen.

–

Dad sulked in an abandoned van,
but dozens more– parked on the
SHORE
had come one day and never left. Their
tires had long rotted off.
The sea wind sealed its mouth, silent
while the vans loomed like Stonehenge.

I dug graves, shoveling through kelp.
My hands, spoons
scooping up bones, and
burying them whole.

Mom ran down the beach
yelling something
about dead fish diseases and hand sanitizer.

Stephani Cook is a second year FPAN student and native Californian. She is excited to ride her bike and eat fiddleheads this Spring. Learn more about her on our Meet Our Writers page.