About the Feature

the clear water that holds up your boat.
The water was clearly built to buoy the boat.
It’s like how TV shows buoy the dead.
After they’ve died, there they are,
their kind faces float just out of reach
like a rescue. Like that tiny island.
I promise I’m not making this up.
Today the world is full of people
who are dead and also you are in it.
By all accounts, everyone everywhere
should be drowning, there’s tons
of water all over and only a few ideas
about how to stay dry and out of it.
From your raft the smell of the water
is patient, which for now is enough
to love it, which for now is helping.

About the Author

Laura Eve Engel's work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Indiana Review, Pleiades, Salt Hill, VOLT and elsewhere. [Spoiler Alert], a prose chapbook she co-wrote, is available from Dzanc Books.