Fly Fishing
They don’t even know what they’re sitting on,
waiting in the cabin of the car– brimming with brawn.
Through the windows, they watch the sizzling heat
wave off of the dockyards as their wild, blonde locks meet
the stream flowing from the air conditioning–
they believed they could be saved by this bathing.
The car’s cabin dipped closer and closer into the water,
dropping its trailing boat into boiling waves to simmer.
I feared for them– sitting nearby on the cool lake sand,
leaning back on my grimy, worm-smelling hands.
From the car’s backseat, a child turned to eye the wharf,
a blameless smile curling up on their lip.
I watched as they softly slipped into the surf,
unaware of the lurking depths that held them up.
Seagulls circled about the carnage overhead–
waiting for me to draw out a fish, hooked to an end of dread.
Toothpick
From tip to tail
there is equality
in the wood. Sandy
staff– stained by scum
for the better good,
a means to an end.
But what a mean
end it is
that picks the cheeky
tooth. Split the pick
in two and the shards
no longer run the same.
Instead, you bring
to your teeth a biting
splinter, which burrows
in the hollows, a woodchuck,
hunting for the most secure
spot of the tooth to pick.
In the Cayman Trench, Thirty Miles Offshore Blossom Village
One hundred and eighty meters
down the lobster sits,
lodged between battle
trenches of coral heads.
Benign, it sleeps,
a maritime strawberry
buried in the straw.
A foreign enemy
passes in its front.
Antennae raised,
aiming, pinpointing.
Its cannonball eyes, fierce
fistfuls of black tourmaline.
Attack then retreat.
The lone lobster,
patrolling the void
in desperation.
Ambiguous wave,
unsettling noise–
asphyxiating all.
Waiting in the cool
gallows of the deep,
rolling down the steep
eternal cliffs below,
intimations of souls
create an undercurrent.
Man-o’-wars,
fighting to find
a way back,
a current more familiar.
Marlena Kolesinska is currently a freshman double majoring in Astrophysics and Physics with a minor in Creative Writing. She is originally from Fort Mill, SC and graduated from the South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Math, where, oddly enough, she discovered her passion for writing fiction. She loves running, composing music, making films, surfing, indie rock, metaphysics, and quantum mechanics.