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[Poetry] Two poems by Luree Scott

by Luree Scott


Beach Body


Mossy, sticky brine

Slithers around my spinal cord

Mucus swirling around each vertebra

Swelling my lungs like the tide

My breath is salt

Seaweed clogged tubes

Arteries filled with water

Palm trees in my trachea

Making beach-scented wheezes

Asthmatic stink of oysters

On my rotten, plastic tongue

Succumbing to the sand

Where we used to laugh

Choking on the memories

Of crumbling castles

Crying over perfect beach bodies

Never fully formed


~*~


The Creature You Found

Muck-like sand that stuck to your shoes

Watered to a deep brown, smooth and waiting

For your feet to mark it deep

As you search for muscles tinted green

And barnacles stuck to rocks

lining the shore

Like the kindergarten crafts of Poseidon’s children


I stay poised on the powdered grains

Ones untouched by the ocean

That are still clean, sterile

Leaves with a simple brush of clumsy fingers

Yet I still get my

hands dirty

Creating a sandcastle to house

The creatures you find


There are pieces of rock and grime under my fingernails

Mossy grime covers yours, I can see it

On your cuticles

But I try to ignore it and hug you anyways

I’m nervous about all the

festering diseases

Can feel my throat swell with some type of salty strep

Gills sprouting

Damned to a life in the water


And I cling to the piece of driftwood

You found

And carved our initials into with your key

We both think it silly

Letters on something as inconsequential and feeble

As driftwood (it’s supposed to be a tree?)


But I still see it, in my mind’s eye

The fact that you tried

And that I am worth a cliché

This creature you found

I cling to it

Still

Less alone

In this life damned to the water



Luree Scott (she/her) is a writer and performer from San Diego, California. She received a BA in Theatre Arts and English from the University of San Diego and is currently an MFA candidate in UCR Palm Desert's Low Residency Program for Creative Writing, where she studies fiction and playwriting. Her previous works can be read in The Alcalá Review, Poets' Choice, Little Thoughts Press, The Bookends Review, GXRL, Grande Dame Literary Journal, and Pink Plastic House: a tiny journal. Her Twitter is @luree_s.

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