ISSUE ONE: Trams Yell Yes! | next poem →

Seasonal Affective Disorder

Ryan Napier

Jacob van Ruisdael, Cuyp, and other Dutch
And Flemish landscape painters used the gray
Low-Country skies and stony seas to state
Their theme. They would have loved Connecticut,
Where seaside yankees strain to hear the cough
(However slight) of waves, and only low
Dividers block that greater sea—the road.
The cars may crash; the waves do not. At left,
Four people wearing sweatshirts stare. They call
This place "the shore:" they know a thing less sand
Than soil is not a "beach." Florida haunts
New England, calls to New Haven with palms
And postcard beauty—both a hope and gulf
Within the slushy, leafless Northern self.

Ryan Napier was born in Plant City, Florida. He holds degrees in literature from Stetson University and Yale Divinity School. His most recent story, "Gnashing of Teeth," appears in The South Florida Arts Journal, and another story is forthcoming in The Rappahannock Review. He lives in Moscow.

ISSUE ONE: Trams Yell Yes! | next poem →






ISSUE ONE: Trams Yell Yes!

Craig Kurtz
    Index Denied
    Reinvestment Order

Erin Dorney
    This Is Not A Poem About
       Fast Food

    Left

Rose Swartz
   Odalisque
   Quondam

Tim Kahl
    Plasma Globe

Alison McCabe
    I Watch Myself Loop

Dan Boehl
   excerpts from whatever
       from @emoemoji

Vanessa Couto Johnson
    (t)ravel
    neces(sit)ies

Valentina Cano
    Planned Remodeling

Ryan Napier
    Seasonal Affective Disorder

Terry Wolverton
    Sizzle and Chew

Gregory Crosby
    Satan's Skull Glows White Hot

Lea Galanter
    When Lost in the Woods

Jake Sheff
    Stasis in Ragtime

Angelica Poversky
    Enough

Mercedes Lawry
    In Late November, There Are
       Days of False Clemency