I want him inside me before weighing anchor, certain Neptune will rise, enraged and hungry, out of those black Jersey seas to swallow us whole on this long night run from Manisquan to Atlantic City. I pull him into me hard--wild animals rutting in this coffin-like cabin, feet kicking yes to the seawater slosh outside.
We stopped making love months ago. Now we just use each other's bodies to unleash our fears and occasionally discover buried treasure.
Red clouds bleed into a blind man's sky when we finally set sail toward the wrecks of Perkins and McAllister, to Dead Man's Reef, where the bones of ancient mariners still rattle. Surreal lights on the distant shore glow as people come and go to K-Mart or McDonalds, normal people with TV's in their dens, kids clinging to their hands.
The cowardly moon blinks, drops out of sight and Neptune appears in the rising winds. He growls at his fleeing prey, hurls spume at our boat, denuded quickly to storm jib and hope.
Each time I clamp my lifeline to the wet bucking deck I dream myself someplace safe, safe in the arms of a man with thick legs and big hands, a man who wants solid ground beneath his feet, but
I know that my siren sisters who called me on other nights and who called me tonight, won't easily release me, so strong are the sea-borne threads between us.
I slip-climb back to my lover's lap, let him fill me again as we surf down the screaming seas, arm braced beside his at the tiller.
I pretend he's an angel washed up over the railing, his mouth rimmed with magic, his semen luminescent.
About the Author
The poetry of Pris Campbell has appeared in such journals as Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, Oranges & Sardines, Wild Goose Review, The Dead Mule, The Cliffs: Soundings, and numerous others. She has been featured poet in Empowerment4Women, In the Fray, and From East to West. She has published two poetry books, Abrasions (Rank Stranger Press) and Sea Trails, a full length book of poems, log notes, charts, and photos based on her sailing trip in 1977 on a 22-foot sailboat down the East coast (Lummox Press, released fall of 2009), as well as two chapbooks, Interchangeable Goddesses (with Tammy Trendle, published by Rose of Sharon Press) and Hesitant Commitments, which is part of Lummox Press's Little Red Book Series. Three nominations for a Pushcart Prize (2008 and 2009) have come her way. After living all over the country, including Hawaii, the Greater West Palm Beach, FL is now her home.
My main focus in art is color, design and composition. I have a true passion for color as the art subject itself - how colors fit together, how they communicate with each other within the design, how certain colors combined with one another evoke a certain feeling - this is paramount in my work. I am a social worker, artist and poet living in Austin, TX. Read More...
The poetry of Pris Campbell has appeared in such journals as Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, Oranges & Sardines, Wild Goose Review, The Dead Mule, The Cliffs: Soundings, and numerous others. She has been featured poet in Empowerment4Women, In the Fray, and From East to West. She has published two poetry books, Abrasions (Rank Stranger Press) and Sea Trails, a full length book of poems, log notes, charts, and photos based on her sailing trip in 1977 on a 22-foot sailboat down the East coast (Lummox Press, released fall of 2009), as well as two chapbooks, Interchangeable Goddesses (with Tammy Trendle, published by Rose of Sharon Press) and Hesitant Commitments, which is part of Lummox Press's Little Red Book Series. Three nominations for a Pushcart Prize (2008 and 2009) have come her way. After living all over the country, including Hawaii, the Greater West Palm Beach, FL is now her home. 
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About Emily Habermehl: Artist Statement
