The Longest Distance Between Two Places by Lynn Schmeidler

We were looking forward to stepping off the southernmost point of the
country.
Instead I’m eating spiny lobster alone.
Bougainvillea makes me think of you
specifically the hairs chesting your throat. Parrot’s hard whistle tells me
everything
is thin
everything is short. A woman on the corner is eating her hair
an anhinga wings above her
pointed and dense. Misery is nobody without the right friends.
Shipwrecks ring the flats and shallows
seagulls hang heavy in the low-ceilinged sky. All a starfish needs
to become two is half its original self.

Lynn Schmeidler’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous magazines including The Awl, Barrow Street, Boston Review and Fence. Her chapbook, Curiouser & Curiouser won the 2013 Grayson Books Chapbook Contest.