Halflife
The Lighthouse Keeper
My ear, a shell on the pillow;
the down, the sea from which his mouth arrived
Strange to live in a wet world, then wake in the desert.
The cactus on whom milky needles grow.
Let me live offshore, where the water is low.
Strange, and then so much less so.
I was seventeen. Do you want
to know what I didn’t know?
I do.
That is from the new book of poetry by Meghan O’Rourke, columnist and culture editor at Slate.com. Here are five more poems from the book. Here is a page on the book. Here is an interview. Here is a rave New York Times review.