United States, (b. 1982)
Our Bodies, the Ocean
(unidentified woman discovered January 23, 2013 in Lattingtown, New York)
- “They are looking for women
- down at Gilgo Beach, bodies
- wound tight with burlap.
- Deep in the rushes
- they find a man
- dressed as a woman,
- the small frame
- of a child, and women,
- so many women
- they could form a choir,
- these saints of the last days.
- It takes more years to find
- me, my bones drenched
- beneath hurricane
- sand and the filmy light
- of Oyster Bay. So deep
- in this shore I must cast
- my body toward fate.
- But don’t believe there is luck
- in wearing a charm for those born
- during the Year of the Pig,
- the final sign
- of those easily fooled
- into believing it is anything
- other then a way for water to collect
- along its curved back
- and beneath its golden hooves.”
© Aimée Baker. Doe. Akron, OH: The University of Akron Press (2018).
About the Poet:
Aimée Baker, United States, (b. 1982), is a poet, essayist and writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Baker earned her MFA from Arizona State University. Her debut poetry collection, Doe, dramatizes the untold stories of missing and unidentified women across the United States.
Banker’s work has appeared in The Southern Review, Gulf Coast, Guernica, The Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in upstate New York and teaches at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, where she is also the Executive Editor of Saranac Review. [DES-01/22]
Additional information:
- Aimée Baker – http://aimeebaker.com/
- Follow @: https://twitter.com/aimee_baker
- Aimée Baker – SUNY, Plattsburgh Faculty
- The Saranac Review – http://saranacreview.com/