by Andrew Kozma

The ocean at my door, the desert in my chest.
All of our letters pulped and ready for the compost.

Love was a question. The dark water’s the answer.
Everything in the sewers washed out to sea

returned with the tide. Dirty diapers, empty bottles,
enough nail clippings to build a snowman. A clip man. A man,

man. Disasters are easier to handle if you embrace
that the disaster was always with you, carrying your body

across the broken glass, one bloody trail of footprints.
Too much water poisons the water, flooded streets

unsafe to drink or even wade through. Is this love,
too? you ask, as I shiver uncontrollably, a fever

nodding my head. A hurricane plus a flood, a narrow breath
of non-water between. Buying groceries on a Sunday, unmasked.

Andrew Kozma’s poems appear in Rogue Agent, Redactions, and Contemporary Verse 2, while his fiction appears in Apex, ergot, and Seize the Press. His first book of poems, City of Regret, won the Zone 3 First Book Award, and his second book, Orphanotrophia, was published in 2021 by Cobalt Press.You can find him on Bluesky at @thedrellum.bsky.social and visit his website at andrewkozma.net.