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One Poem 

Liz N. Clift

Highway 101

Ochre stars cling to the pilings of the rotting dock,
rusted cables are rough with mussels, and maybe
the stars are plotting their attack, maybe it’ll occur
under the cover of dark, the stars slipping across
this rocky shore. One day, maybe there will be
no more sea stars. They’re wasting, bodies warping
with disease. Three of my friends had abnormal
paps within the past month, are undergoing
colposcopies, and somehow we’re supposed
to not be afraid, to keep working at our jobs
so we keep our insurance, so maybe we don’t die
quite yet. The rocks are slick with tar spot, balancing
is precarious, and the barnacles are clicking shut
against low tide. All our technology and still
our bodies are soft animals. The fog wisps in, ghosts
of shipwrecks, loves who’ve taken their last dance,
low clouds lilting with the currents, dampening
the sound and my cheeks and eyelashes.