by persis flores
If Sunday is a day of prayer then this beach is our church
Benediction doesn’t come knocking. It thrums.
Each grain of sand hums and her, your angel,
is dancing on the head of this pinned shoreline.
High tide, half our foothold as seabed
washes up a seaweed escarpment,
rutted in the wreck: monolith’s rotten stink.
Beauty doesn’t need to beautiful, she says
and you watch angle fishers cast sinker and line,
tense with curvature, into the lapping brine.
Your backyard beach, your playground of salt.
The soles imprinted by people walking past,
travelling through. Your favourites are the many dogs.
How they leap, cherubim with legs grande jeté,
akimbo tongues lolling to pant afternoon heat,
fur rippled with the foam that rises like love.
You watch other families, whole in an unconditional
nuclear explosion, boogie board, swim, bake, picnic:
she is missing your daddy with each passing moment.
She asks if you can learn to fish but you
have already experienced enough death.
Besides, who would gut them? Not you.
Instead, you comb, but take nothing home.
You make piles, arrange shapes, mandalas
so pretty the ocean reaches up to grab them.
This, a day of rest, of wet encrusted
skin, drying in the hymn of a sun breaching
to set, Sistine sealing daylight within.
You empty buckets into the froth and the sea
licks them clean. With stomachs grumbling
you seek out hot chips, her a seagull, speaking
esurience. Fishermen pack up their rods.
You walk back to the car where she falls asleep
in an instant. You wipe prayers from her feet.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell is a queer non-binary poet. They were the 2023 winner of The XYZ Prize for Innovation in Spoken Word. SPM’s debut poetry collection Clean (Upswell Publishing, 2022) was shortlisted for The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, The WA Premier’s Book Awards and The Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
persis flores writes more than she talks. she practices a poetics of attention to people, to expressions, to everyday gestures rooted in meaning and care. her attempts at photography, poetry, and music are her micro-routes to learning more about the world and herself. she intentionally gets lost, allowing herself to flow between pages, photos, poems, and percussion to recharge her soul’s battery. “creation is the language of purpose” is the mantra she lives by — and the one she hopes will be etched on her epitaph someday https://linktr.ee/persisflores https://hellopersis.com/about/ https://substack.com/@persisflores https://www.instagram.com/persisflores