Nicholas Rega
Sea Debris
Walking down through the gate (that should not be here) sand cold I see the waves white-lipped and shivering where are you now and turning right the wind gives me a good shoving. Shells shells from unwatched tides mark a line I do not cross
sign on the parts strewn and pounded to never fit back together again. Feet buzz numb thumpthumping. I skirt the edge and pick a shell boomeranging it
Red throat of a flower eaten at by sand and water center of a conch
so red my feet buzz thumpbuzzing numb. Feathery display winged turmoil as a head of wind-whipped hair golden hay buried in the wa- sand bedhead mess of bird mauled by some storm crumbled crumpled as a deflated pufferfish no I saw that cast upon the strand banana slices? those that hide shells
a necklace I once gave but the shells still to my right and a half bird red sunk in the grains cold my feet buzz thump thump ing… Tide pools cut a you shape and I dash in throwing the fish by a fin but now the pushpull plays with it and I stomp back averting my gaze you following behind dead fishy eyes. Hands casting seashells at ga-sp-ing lips spit-t-ing them back out more red. But one half is too big and hands go up in their snailshellsleeves. No one else braves the breeze
gulls and pelicans flying in V not you formation information that does not reach me going past yet there is a hook in my toe reel me in another dead pufferfish and a red Is that your lover flying over my head bird shadow feet cold thum p ing. The other wing torn in the stone smacks from tactless lips painted
foam floating free red again. That wing I pull stretching it in aerial display
mauled feathers… Wet down in the grains gate closing.
Born in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, Nicholas Rega studies British & American Literature and Creative Writing at The University of Kent in Canterbury, England. He has been published by The Claremont Review and Four Ties Lit Review and have won the ZO Magazine Silver Prize for Poetry.