60 for 60: Shore Leavings

By Catherine Fisher

One amazing thing about poetry is that it doesn’t have to make sense. Many of us spend our days working toward clarity, in our communications with one another, in our work, and we require it from most things we consume, be it the news or a podcast. Poetry exists in a space outside of this requirement. How liberatory!

Reading through the archive, I came across Nicky Beer’s poem “Shore Leavings” from our thirty-third issue, released in 2000. This poem is intoxicatingly out of grasp. It is not difficult, if from difficulty we expect confusing diction or long, hard-to-follow sentences. Instead, there are things a reader understands—there is a speaker sitting on the beach surrounded by the detritus of the weekend—but beyond this we are in a sea of language and punctuation that produces more of an emotional space than a singular meaning. I find that this frees us up from our day-to-day, and I hope you do too. Besides, the poem begins with a line you can’t not love: “Monday already? The world cranks onward!”

Shore Leavings

Nicky Beer

Monday already? The world cranks onward!
All I remember of Sunday is scattered around
the deck chair: hulled almonds, hibiscus,
rum-soaked sand. Forgive the smears.

How is it that you persist (suet sky
heat cold and all)? Obliteration, come
and scour me to frosty abalone. Gulls,
droop in the porous air. Shut down the surf,

the whole damned season. Will you devour
even these parings off my day? Savage!
Gloat at the regularity of this tide—
shepherded, trussed and meek all days but Sunday.

Well. Are the ferns browning over yet?
These native sandals have cut me new feet,
and I am as dark as the hourly driftwood.
Write, and send the geese down soon.



About the author:

Catherine Fisher is a poet and movement artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She is working on her MFA in poetry and translation at Columbia University.