Kristen Gallagher: 820 THE BEACH - HARE • Cleaver Magazine

Poetry by Kristen Gallagher
820 THE BEACH – HARE

The image is as the title suggests: the beach.
But also a person sitting on it, or possibly
kneeling, facing the water, and also
possibly covered in spores, or
in the disintegration of the image itself,
halfway between the dunes
and the sea, in shadow,
not quite in photonegative. The sand
gets darker as it approaches the water
and the person sitting on it appears
solid, one with the beach, but for the
spores, or decay, gathering
to make the silhouette appear.
If not for decay, we wouldn’t know
anyone was there. I wonder,
about the person seated at the beach
are they aware they are being photographed?
All we know is that they were at the beach
and the sliver of sand
between them and the sea
and the tops of the crests of the waves
coming in before them, attract or create
otherworldly orbs, pale, gray
hovering holes or lights.
In the Wizard of Oz, Glinda the Good
Witch always enters as floating bubbles.
But here nearly nothing
finally appears. Only shadows
and holes.

Kristen Gallagher is the author of four books: 85% True / minor ecologies (Skeleton Man 2017), Grand Central (Troll Thread 2016), Florida (Well Greased 2014), and We Are Here (Truck Books 2011). A chapbook of poems is forthcoming from Spiral Editions. Recent writing appears in The Baffler, Trilobite Bond, and Air/Light. She was recently awarded a NYSCA Artist’s Grant for a collaboration with filmmaker Tara Nelson, working with lantern slides from The Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. Videos from this collab can be found at Air/Light, Tagvverk, and Dīstantia Remote Reading Series. This poem in Cleaver 53 emerged alongside that project. Kristen’s Instagram is @minor_ecologist.