No News Today - Guest Post - Leigh Stein

DEFINITION OF ADRIFT

Adjective. Mapless, does not answer
to her married name, marooned
on a beach on which every night
the tide erases her letters home.
Can never remember what she wrote.
Last night's said: Send a fleet.
Tonight she will write: Send a fleet.
Never anchored. Like some islands,
the ones made of bulrush, or shipwrecked
love that loses its shape inside the ever after.
Distressed. Consumed with nostalgia
for copy machines, a desktop clock,
a postcard sent from one destination
to another: I'm here. I can't speak
the language, but I'm not coming back.
On this island there are no postcards.
Tonight she will write: Send pirates
in the sand. Or tonight she will forget to
write. Tonight she will try to mend the boat,
then go and sit in a grotto at high tide awe-
stricken with oblivion, motherless.

Leigh Stein is the author of the novel The Fallback Plan from Melville House Press. Her first full-length poetry collection, Dispatch from the Future, is forthcoming from Melville House in July 2012.