Nautical Twilight
But when below decks Jason
tried to stitch his lips to mine
the sun was still twelve degrees
under the slipknot of dawn.
By the Equinox, he’d cast
himself off from the moored
hull of the horizon. Why didn’t I
drift off my masthead and down
into the hot sheets, unslack
the lines, unroll the sails? Too late
now to fall into a tangle
of fleece and feet and coils
and hands and hair, which is
how they found him.
Jen Ryan Onken lives and teaches high school in southern Maine. Recent poems have appeared on Maine Public Radio, and in The Harbor Review, DeLuge, and Love’s Executive Order. In 2019, her poem won the Maine Poet’s Society Prize for previously unpublished poets. Her micro chapbook, That First Toss, was a finalist for the Washburn Prize at The Harbor Review. Jen recently finished her MFA from Warren Wilson.
