Read More: A brief Q&A with Courtney Hitson
Key West, 2024
Reefs continue to spill their innards
of red and teal as stalagmites of staghorn coral sit
like snow-covered bramble awaiting
a thaw, empty-promised. C’mon Key West,
keep trying, island, punch-drunk and inflamed
raw by the tension we’ve chosen
to ignite between surface and space.
A colossal dusk. The sunset is suddenly fragile,
stained glass, stripped of its stencil,
hot and oozing fierce pastels.
We harvest limits of normal like corn-shuckers
blistered senseless. One season’s merciless hurricane
portends next year’s three. We toss blame
like a boiling potato before
binging on the mash, while jumbo jets
of tourists signature the sky
with contrails—jagged clouds of white cursive
on an unbreakable contract.
Mural: Seattle
Grey whale surfacing like the glimpse of a forgotten dream. Doodling fanged flowers on cocktail napkins. A dead tree trunk, limbs Medusa’d, a wet fleece of moss adorning her like dendritic long johns. A baby pink Snoopy sweatshirt. Running switchbacks in knee socks unintended for running and my lungs heaving to gasp, as if straining to touch an unreachable place. Trying to hide my nausea in the fish market. Prefontaine street. Envisioning my calves’ dissolving musculature during mile 12 in my Chucks. Our ferry passing a rocky island of seals. Those same seals bellowing, dissonant and proud, like a choir of preschoolers. Pulling at an oak’s sheath of soggy bark. Leaving a trail of Skittles to follow, should I get lost running in the forest. A rendition of Macbeth modernized into the setting of a suburban high school. An Indian café’s egg-white porcelain dishes. Watching Zeppelins of orcas, boatside, peak upwards to meet my sightline. Running and rounding the retention pond’s sidewalk like a ruminating thought.
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Courtney Hitson holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia College Chicago and currently teaches English at the College of the Florida Keys. Her poems have appeared in various literary journals including DMQ Review, McNeese Review, Wisconsin Review, and others. She teaches English at the College of the Florida Keys. Outside of writing she enjoys unicycling, philosophy, and drawing.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Courtney Hitson