The ESA would like to con­grat­u­late the win­ners of the 2020 Poet­ry Con­test! First place was award­ed to Ojo Taiye for “Moira Camp: The New Colos­sus”, and sec­ond place was award­ed to Kather­ine DeCoste for “Eden”.

Kather­ine DeCoste has giv­en per­mis­sion for us to share her poem. Read “Eden” below!

Eden

You think they’re all dead bod­ies,

but the crabs just molt this time of year,

their soft flesh forc­ing itself out gaps

where claws were once. Float­ing down like

corpses on the stink­ing tide for you to pick

out with curi­ous, uncar­e­ful hands and break

between your knuck­les. So there it is.

 

The water clear between the body

and the break.

The stink of it, the shit in it, the smell

of brine you thought fresh for a week

or two, before sum­mer spoiled it and you.

You could, almost, toss his corpse out

into the cur­rents that chill the sea here

so that no mat­ter how far south we get

the water always gnaws at bone.

 

You used to have faith in some­thing.

Cold clear voice in the night

like a child’s, tin rap of the drum. Here

where the moss grows, the catch and release

of the spi­der in the arbu­tus’ nook,

its neck slope, nes­tled

and you could build a cross from this. From

where the spine curves in its pri­vate

pain. From the holes you imag­ine

in your palms when his eyes go cold.

 

You could res­ur­rect this.

Or set the whole beach alight.

No birch, no bomb. Only smoke

in the night. But the bro­ken things bend

under the Pacif­ic breeze and you labour

up the reluc­tant reach of the hill.

His shad­ow cast over you.

So you smear ash there, between the skin

and the shame. Between the moon

and the cove it hits. Between the gar­den

and the snake, the body and the break.

This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.