a poem by dan rosenberg

Beached


What perfect
and speckled battlements—

a thumbprint
is a window

to the child.

A dapple.
What potential—

just lift this
overturned pail

thick with sand.

*

Boring like to make
a hole—in the sun

and hiding
from it, these

glasses darken my vision—

in pursuit
of paradise I’m still.



"Beached" originally appeared in American Letters & Commentary



Dan Rosenberg’s first book, The Crushing Organ, won the 2011 American Poetry Journal Book Prize, and is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press. His poems have appeared recently in several magazines, including Pleiades, American Letters & Commentary, Subtropics, and Third Coast.  A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is currently a co-editor at Transom and a Ph.D. student at UGA in Athens, GA.