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.