Red sunset interspersed with Saharan sands
that wind carried over the Atlantic,
red like the politician’s ear grazed,
up top, against their white sunlit shirt.
Red like tycoons billowing
buffoons flying high on greed.
A storming sky and ocean
are identical twins so your nostrils stir
to take in salt spray from a lone sky.
You want to linger in the horizonless dolphin-silver
away from what’s constructed, like time,
stationed at this light signaling red.
This poem first appeared in New Verse News.
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Shira Dentz is the author of five books including Sisyphusina (PANK), winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize, and two chapbooks. Her writing appears in many venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, New American Writing, Poets.org, and NPR, and she’s a recipient of awards including an Academy of American Poets Prize, Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Awards, and NELLE Literary Journal’s Three Sisters Award for creative nonfiction. More at www.shiradentz.com
