This is Not that Kind of Rhapsody
Jessica Guzman Alderman
So many times we’ve returned the way we’ve come. On another woman a blush is becoming.
The water was rising; catfish filled the ditch where fire ants wrested a child’s sneaker.
Now the sandhill cranes are quiet or gone. The promise of thunder is reason enough,
but still I press my head against your chest. Any closer and I’d fall through you
like smoke. The ocean would swallow this city whole. Some things lend themselves to shipwreck.
Jessica Guzman Alderman is a Florida native. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Meridian, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Saw Palm, among other journals. She is a PhD student at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers.