ISSUE THREE: Alertly Messy | next poem →

Harbor Lights

Claire Scott

harbor lights
red/green, red/green

gleaming guides
for ships at night

the old man’s skin
smells of sea

salt cracked hands
salmon flashing

in the boat’s
flaked hull

red/green, red/green
will take you home

to steaming stew
the slake of sex

a soft bed that
doesn’t sway

rocking/rocking
the ship's captain

takes tourists
to spot whales

woozy, reeling
rocking/rocking

a grey whale spews
so close you see

rimes of barnacles
on his marbled back

red/green,red/green
the captain harbor—

bound to hose his
ship and head to

Lucky's Last Call
lingering 'til

midnight as
I sit on the

dock wrapped
in wool blankets

dreamy under
night’s starred sky

I gaze at
harbor lights that

guide my life
red/green, red/green

and yellow ones
that flash warning

stay away from men
who steer sorrow in
a boat called love

the lights dissolve
one by one

thirty years
in a leather

chair listening
sharing worlds

witnessing wonders
a light goes out

as I lock the door
three children grown

lucky for a
weekly chat

a two word text
a skinny Skype

three lights fade
into murky waters

crumpled slips
mock ambition

your work does not
suit our present needs

we wish you
placing your etc. etc.

the muse’s light
flickers

the harbor dark
no reference

point to guide
red/green, red/green

no yellow light
to flash alerts

a dim shadow
on the shore

the stubbed out
space of death

before death
the gray whale sinks

fishhooks
scrape the bottom

harbor lights
red/green, red/green

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has published in many literary magazines. She was nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize. Claire is a winner of the Arizona State Poetry Society 2013 Annual Poetry Contest. Her forthcoming first collection of poems, Waiting to be Called, will be published by IF SF Press in late 2014.

ISSUE THREE: Alertly Messy | next poem →











ISSUE THREE: Alertly Messy

Kelly Nelson
   My Uncle at Nineteen
   His Mother Writes
      the Warden, 1955

Jon-Michael Frank
   Funny How Time Slips Away
   Not Fade Away

Jacqueline Jules
   Obsolete Angers

J. Bradley
   Yelp Review:
     Planned Parenthood
    of Greater Orlando

   Yelp Review:
     The Milk Bar

Amy Schriebman Walter
   Hope in a Yellow Dress

Miho Kinnas
   Earlobes

Mark Povinelli
   Notes I
   Notes II

Kenneth Nichols
   The Best Writers
     Bombed the SAT

John Patsynski
   The Money Weapon

Aileen Bassis
   Pellucid Musing

Travis Macdonald
   When the Map's Crease
      Becomes an Axis
      and Detaches

Kris Hall
   Pyromanian I
   Pyromanian II

Claire Scott
   Harbor Lights

Elizabeth Kate Switaj
   Poseidon's Canto