[Now it is February]

Now it is February & now the taste of the sea is an agent on my numb tongue
 
I must work or die I must write these words to be buried under a cask of snow
 
And now I feel the island’s love as a dull relentless haze     mercy hot & slow
 
I constellate myself to that mama rock wherever I go let me be real one day
 
I beg & bow     storm & howl     did you come to know me did you survive it?
 
 
 

Opal C McCarthy is a poet, teacher and joy worker living in Minneapolis. Her poems have appeared in alice blue review, Le Petite Zine, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Opal's pamphlet, Surge: An Oral Poetics is available from eohippus labs press, and her debut poetry collection is forthcoming from Tinderbox Editions in 2016.