- Mar 22
- 2 min read
For so long the desire to be brand spanking new
Wrinkles daisy-chain my neck the way
I once let hickeys adorn me—hunger
a shark tooth necklace I’m all
too thrilled to don. My good-luck
fossil. My killer amulet. Here I
am again, desiring to be found.
Instead: derelict, a ghost net of
of patchwork nylon abandoned
at sea. What was once a fishing
line is now a noose drifting, still
a hundred thousand years left to
biodegrade. Snagging is inevitable.
A blue whale once towed over
100 feet of crabbing lines, that
ball-and-chain effect heavier
each day. No way to lunge feed
krill with a tongue snarled.
How do you accept help from
who’s hurt you time and time
again? Some adult humpbacks
teach their young to whip their tail
flukes to extricate from the trap.
They clap like a coach, desperate to
win. I mean survive. Entanglement
a requirement for any human love.
Gummy worms swell in a redfish
belly, pushing at organs. Plastic
confused as sustenance. I want
out, to be taken far from the ocean
like a ship lovingly restored, sweated
on, protected in a marine museum;
held by hands who knew me when
I thought my face would always
wake up sun-kissed, unhinged
as the eye of a storm lured into
temporary stillness, unable to
resist its high-speed succumbing.
Newness was never an option.
When winds rip this frivolous
rigging apart, that cyclone shreds
longing into understanding. I’m
never gone, even when I want to be.
ALYX CHANDLER (she/her) is a writer from the South who received her MFA in poetry at the University of Montana, where she was a Richard Hugo Fellow and taught poetry. In 2025, she won the Three Sisters Award in Poetry with Nelle Literary Journal, received a Creative Catalyst grant from the Illinois Arts Council, and attended residencies at Ragdale and Taleamor Park. Her poetry can be found in the Southern Poetry Anthology, North American Review, EPOCH, Greensboro Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere at alyxchandler.com.