After Reading a Whole Book by Mary Ruefle

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There was something to say on every corner 

the day we walked around the beach town 

art galleries eating ice cream. 


He was in a mood just past agreeable 

where he was occasionally 

repeating my exact phrase

as if convincing an audience.


I needed a picture of the closed movie theatre in fog 

with the marquee letter ‘a’ slipping off.

Boats bore names to pick apart 

like shellfish for their puns. 

Back in my car I played a cover song then the original 

before he said let’s get going. 


I want to commandeer a Buddha nature, 

a hardness compelling and attractive.

Sometimes I glance at him with inevitable purpose

like timed sprinklers kicking on at night, a silence saying 

here’s something you couldn’t dream of, 

like burying myself in beach sand 

and keeping a hand free to feel each grain 

as I shovel myself back out. 

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Brooke Harries is from Sacramento, California. Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, Breakwater Review, Hoot Review, and FishFood Magazine. She’s received the UC Irvine Graduate Award for Excellence in Poetry, the Dorothy and Donald Strauss Endowed Dissertation & Thesis Fellowship, and the Academy of American Poets Harold Taylor Prize. She holds a BA from San Francisco State University and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. She is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Southern Mississippi.

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