You are reading Fiddleblack #1
Gravitate to the shore, to the edges
of land. Go to the water, go in it,
fall off the globe. California ends,
disintegrates: loose soil, sand, saltwater.
This is where we play, at the fringe,
in the rubble. Our country, the bear rug.
We crawl toward its claws, feel for
the floor in the darkness beneath it.
No dogs, the sign says, but here
in the waves, a black dog. He bucks
toward dry sand, notched branch in
his jaws. Mouth antlers. A ruler
between his teeth. Look what I found
for you, he would shout out if he could,
and lunges toward his human carrying
a devotion so huge that the world tilts.
Hannah Stephenson is a poet, editor, instructor, and singer-songwriter living in Columbus, Ohio. Hannah earned her MA in English from the Ohio State University in 2006, and her poems and songs have appeared in publications such as The Nervous Breakdown, qarrtsiluni, MAYDAY, Whale Sound, FORTH, Spoonful, Birmingham Arts Journal and anthologies from Lazy Gramophone Press. She is a poetry blogger for The Huffington Post, and is the founder of Paging Columbus!, a literary arts monthly event series.