On One Side the Ocean, the Other the Bay

by Aaron Magloire

Featured art: “Morning Fog (found film #07)” by anonymous

They are so much smaller than you’d think,

the Assateague ponies marching

up from the marsh

to the road

like an olive branch.

Like I might snap

their legs

just thinking on it too long.

Even a week before June it’s only a few

above freezing, the waves

rearing their white heads

and milk teeth.

I find a crab shell half-

buried in the sand. The wind,

cold off the water.

Probably a gull

ate its innards, left

its architecture as evidence.

Probably there was blood.

Pony eyes like rotted water

chestnuts.

I am not safe anywhere.

A sign on the shore reads

WARNING

NO SWIMMING

KNOWN HAZARDS

Yes, I think. Familiar tercet.

So they’ve said. Something moves

its body just beyond

my peripheral. And again

the gust is quickening.

Again the sand

lifting like a promise.

Aaron Magloire is from Queens, and studies English and African American Studies at Yale, where he's a senior. Other works of his have appeared in or are forthcoming from Boston Review, Quarterly West, Best New Poets 2021, and elsewhere.