Phuket

by Joan Eyles Johnson

ImaginEarth

A tsunami slaps the shoreline scrubs along A mess of metal wood and plastic The sea digs fingernails into wreckage Scrambles out again to where it lives Here and there a black finger points Plinths of vulgar insult to the land dissolving A young man who never noticed nature Never ran barefoot on dew drenched grass Never learned to love somebody well Never skipped to the end of a book A boy who rode a yellow bus to school With cargo packs of wiggling kids Whose sister left this year to join a convent Whose parents now are curled in empty shells And now will never know what became of him Riding to shore on a mattress of fire

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Joan Eyles Johnson has had her work published in Ambit (UK), Confluence, Diabolique, and more. She is a poet and short story author, winning the 2016 Ernest Hemingway Prize for short fiction.