Boy in Fins
Andrea Cohen
issue 65, 2018
He has to walk
backwards into the sea,
as if saying goodbye
to the cliffs, to the cliff-
side shacks, to the women
knitting in the lamplight
inside them. He walks back-
wards on his awkward
fins, at dusk, as if
becoming another
creature—which,
leaving all we
know, we must.
Andrea Cohen’s new collection, Nightshade, will be out soon (Four Way, 2019). Other recent books include Unfathoming and Furs Not Mine. She directs the Writers House at Merrimack College and the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts.