Karen Hildebrand
At the Brink
Put down your Nathan’s, your slice of Famous Ray’s—
the beach is a dangerous place in a hurricane.
Today we can’t hail a beer from a man
with a cooler to sip as we consider the way
the sand washes out. Here at the Lone Star Western,
it’s time to admit we are drawn to the brink.
Whether standing at the edge of cliff or coast,
we persist in contradicting the evidence. We can
no longer look down at our feet as the sludge
seeps between our toes. Don’t you understand?
The journey is complete from where we began:
the cement slab we called summer, tangled
garden hose, dish of water left out for the dog.
—Submitted on
Karen Hildebrand is the author of Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Blue Mesa Review, 14 Hills, A Gathering of the Tribes, and other journals, as well as in It’s Animal But Merciful (great weather for MEDIA, 2012), edited by de Hildebrand lives in Brooklyn.
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