Karyna McGlynn and Fez Avery
—
He Thinks It’s Funny to Scare Us, to Pinch Us
in the pit of his pitching arm
& grapple us under the ladder
of New Daddy’s watercraft.
We’ve shot up fast as a patch
of Dame's Rocket, but still
insist on stopping the speedboat
every half hour to show off
our two-piece & our New Dive.
Brother says we're below average
swimmers, but we swear:
that Kraken shot from the Depths
to nibble on our delicious toes
specifically. All the adults
have stopped listening. This is
how we die & deserve it.
Is it more or less tragic
that we knew not to straggle
in duckweed, but hooked ankles anyway.
It's not like we didn't hear
NO SWIMMING FOR 1 HOUR
but when we saw lightning gloss
the dark part of the lake
we had to cross it, had to go play
Patrick Swayze in the lily pads.
What can we say about
our underbaked sidestroke—that we
were bad at putting the apple in the basket?
And what would we say to New Daddy now?
If we had a mouth to say it.
If he had a mind to listen.
Karyna McGlynn is a writer, visual artist, and educator. She is Director of Creative Writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts, and was the 23-24 Visiting Distinguished Professor of Poetry in the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan. She is the author of three poetry collections from Sarabande Books, including 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse (2023 Lambda Literary Finalist), Hothouse (a New York Times Editor’s Choice), and I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry). Karyna received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing & Literature from University of Houston. Their writing has appeared in Poetry, Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, New England Review, and Kenyon Review. Current collaborative projects include a book of poetry with Fez Avery, The Rules of Witch Stick, and a spoken word album with their band Acting Classes.
Fez Avery is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Virginia Tech, where they also teach. They are a recipient of the Emily Morrison Poetry Prize, Virginia Tech Poetry Prize, and two Hopwood Awards. During summers, they teach poetry, spoken word, and creative nonfiction at Interlochen Arts Camp. Their work can be found in The Journal, Gulf Coast, and NonBinary Review. They recently completed the chapbook Virgin Plastic and are working on a full length poetry collection.
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