Three Poems By Dawn Corrigan

Beach Rental
 
Just under thunderclouds, two pelicans glide.
Crabs dance over sand, runners stealing a base.
They rebuild a world with each outgoing tide
a world where incredible things take place:
 
A man takes naps inside a pink house.
A woman learns how to laugh at herself.
Barnacles kick food into their own mouths.
A school of rays hugs the coastal shelf.
 
The man wakes up and drifts to the lanai
where the woman’s shoulders are starting to peel.
Later she’ll laugh at that lowering sky
when the cumulonimbus part to reveal
 
the man, wiping his beard on the woman’s thighs,
the flagpole’s pair of mating dragonflies.




Hurricane Season
 
The night you told me we were finished
I kept my tantrum short and sweet.
The squall blew up and then diminished
before I headed out to meet
the one I’d hung on to as surplus.
I didn’t think this would hurt us.
“There’s always someone else,” you’d said,
bon mot I took each night to bed
along with all you’d been bestowing.
But daylight brought a transformed guise:
my skin in pustules, swollen eyes,
stuck in a wind that just kept blowing
my cyclone-ravaged entrails burned.
It was years before the weather turned.



 
Rondeau of the East Wind 
 
When this wind blows the street light cables
Tangle with the crowns of sabal.
Palm leaves lacerate the air.
The picnic table’s God knows where.
A beach chair tumbles through the gravel.
 
Lurid flowers, creamy, tropical,
Shudder, droop, and shed their petals.
Trenchcoated women toss their hair
When this wind blows.
 
At the P.O., I ponder travel.
Will you ever read my ounce of babble
if I hurl this letter in the air?
The postal clerk’s begun to stare.
All the sudden moves unsettle
when the East Wind blows.

Dawn Corrigan’s poetry and prose have appeared widely in print and online. Her masthead credits include Western Humanities Review, Girls with Insurance, and Otis Nebula, where she currently serves as assistant editor. She works in the affordable housing industry and lives in Myrtle Grove, FL. Find her online at www.dawncorrigan.com.