Jennie Meyer
Jennie Meyer, M.Div., is a poet and dreamworker. Her poetry has appeared in The Weight of Motherhood: A Moonstone Arts Center Anthology, Tidelines: An Anthology of Cape Ann Poets, Albatross, Anchor Magazine, Artis Natura, Canary, Molecule, Mothers Always Write, Mutha Magazine, The Fourth River, The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, among others. She is a 2024 finalist for Cathexis Northwest Press: Unpublished Author Chapbook contest, a 2023 winner of Beyond Words: The End of the World Creative Writing Challenge and a 2022 grant recipient from Discover Gloucester for poems and an essay. You can find her @thedreamnest.co
Phantom Hold
I lift a black rubber glove from the shoreline,
a cut rope caught between
sand-swollen fingers, index and ring.
I walk as if holding the hand of a fisherman
who must have almost lost life or limb
as his new gear, just paid for, escaped
from him with the burn
of rope ripping traps and glove away
into the mounting waves.
Here, on the beach, the phantom
hand and I together grasp
a broken piece of trap wrapped
with a cluster of frizzled aquamarine line,
fibers like uprooted sea moss.
At the far end, a mashed carcass
of lobster traps: storm-mangled,
plastic-wrapped metal, foam buoys
with fresh paint, zip tie bands lined up
on shanks like hospital bracelets.
Further on, severed
metal grids—
scattered like ribs.
They say a heart transplant
can fill a person with memories
of the donor.
Here, amidst the tatters of his life-line,
jetsam from my depths rise and tumble in—
shiny trappings and plans dashed.
How I dream of us at night
on his boat. The ocean
calm, the catch hauled in.
His cold sea fingers clasping mine.
