Eren Harris
BEACH//BODY
With trunks and no shirt on, I face
the folding curtain of the sea,
sunscreen slathered like cream sauce
over salmon scars, scallop pallor.
Behind me, through the wave-veil
voices pepper the shore
like gulls. I don’t turn, just wonder
what they see, edging ankle, calf, knee
through the foamy fringes. Up
to my hips now, I exhale and
turn shoreward, limpet nipples
inoffensive now in their uncanny gorge.
A wild swell claps my back, clatters
champagne-bright,
and now I’m newly baptized
and we laugh.
The horizon shines beneath low clouds,
a thin white line on fire.
Back on dry sand,
from the cooler you fish
a bag of red-gold grapes.
They’re perfect: the crunch
of taut skin yielding
to incisors, sweet sugarburst
no seeds on my tongue,
no nagging stubs of vine.
Eren Harris is a genre- and gender-fluid creator. Their debut chapbook, Chrysalis, is available from LupercaliaPress. Their poems have most recently appeared in Claw & Blossom, The Song Between Our Stars, and their short story “Bodies in Flight” won the fiction prize for Please See Me’s Spring 2020 contest. They live with their husband and cats in Los Angeles, where they are editing their first novel. Find them on twitter @eren_harris and on the ‘gram @erenharris.