Size / / /

I will raise you right this time, my shark.

Unanchor you at large from this shoal,

unlike the morning my sister and I sculpted

half a hammerhead out of wet inlet sand.

She molded your mouth too slight, your fins too fine;

the tide's shaping was tough on us both.

She never believed our father's story—his left arm lost

to a shortfin mako—and I never dissected you in school.

All my solo trips to collect you from the coast

come back too piecemeal. So for my next mirror trick,

I must steal the black fossils my sister has cached away.

Hide them in his unused winter glove. When I reach

inside, his hand shakes mine with teeth, as if to say,

"Well done, my man. Now throw all of me back."




Alexander Lumans (a.h.lumans@gmail.com) graduated from the M.F.A. Fiction Program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His poems have been published in or are forthcoming from Southern Humanities Review, South Carolina Review, The Collagist, among other magazines. You can read his work in Surreal South '09, The Versus Anthology, and Realms 2: The Second Year of Clarkesworld Magazine. He placed third in Sycamore Review's 2010 Wabash Poetry Prize. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
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25 Mar 2024

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