POETRY
Skinny
We dove clean into the chlorine
where raindrops rose
like stalagmites from the night-lit pool,
and floated in the shifting cyan glow
of artificial hope. In being naked,
we forgot to be alone.
The water, of course, was heated
and chemical-sweet, like a kiss
ought to be. Soaked in blues
and sober, I chose
to know him. Once-loves sunk,
not like stones but like rain onto
my upturned tongue. Here I am, Polo,
a body exposed
and hid again; while thunder hung
like laughter in gods’ lungs, the deluge
was diluted by a halting touch. Lightning
—or a bulb in some strange home—
shone electric, Edenic, on the scene.
So we ran, bare and trembling,
for our clothes.
Bio
Sorella Lark Andersen is a senior Creative Writing and Visual Arts student at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. Her poems have been published in the Eckerd Review—where she currently serves as co-Editor-in-Chief—and in Z Publishing’s Florida’s Best Emerging Poets.
Note
“Skinny” was inspired by my bucket-list trip to Cypress Cove, a nudist resort in Kissimmee, Florida.
Q&A
What is one thing about you that people assume?
Upon meeting me for the first time and noticing my height—I’m 6’1”—new acquaintances often tell me: “You must play basketball!” Some of them then smile self-assuredly, as if they were an amateur psychic performing a party trick. Others apologize immediately, saying “But you must get that all the time!” The ritual confuses me, more than anything.
What is your spirit animal?
I don’t have a spirit animal, but an animal that appears sometimes in my poetry is the black skimmer (Rynchops niger). Skimmers are common to the southwest Florida beaches that I grew up frequenting. To hunt, the birds slice their red-tipped beaks through the shallow water, barely skimming the surface, then lift back into the sky; it’s a beautiful thing to watch.
Rock, paper, or scissors?
As a writer and sometime collage-artist, it feels appropriate to choose paper.