How just like the navy

posted Mar 30, 2010

How just like the navy
to remind us by saying
that we’d be turning around
right now if it weren’t for the gaps.
Victory has always felt like a secret
clasp in front for a dream,
and the long treks out past
l’avenue grande wind along
the vineyards.
                   With a howl in time,
I suppose, the world may have, too,
a taste. Does the phrase "knuckles in peril"
mean anything to you? Something else, also,
about the ocean and its hard necklace
of salt and light. I do believe a body
could be filled to the horizon here.
But, oh, close your eyes: it’s just the night.

William Auten's poetry and paintings have appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Literary Salt, Nimrod, Sycamore Review, and other publications. He lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia.

We’ve published eight of Auten’s paintings: “Golgotha,” “William? Mr. Blake?,” “Noctis Equis,” “Untitled,” “Mountain 1,” “Mountain 2,” “Mountain 3,” and “Mountain 4.”