Audrey Walls' poetry has found homes in Cream City Review, H_NGM_N, Meridian, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a 2015 Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net 2014, and Best New Poets 2013. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s MFA program, she lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she serves as poetry editor of failbetter.
Little Ghosts
Cape Fear River, North Carolina
In your lungs, you held hurricanes,
the sand-water cough still breathing.
We escaped the high water that tunneled
down Front Street. They were nothing
compared to the bagyos that lacerated
the archipelago you called home
as a child. Our backs to the concrete,
we traced ourselves in chalk. Here is where
we will die. Here we will be little ghosts. I brushed
back your hair & circled your head
with white gritty lines. Elbows jutting
in moonlight. That night you taught me
your tongue. I carry twin words as fishhooks
in my lips: karagatan for the ocean
& katawan for the rake of your fingers
against my back: the body.