Melissa Tuckey

 

It was the lightest sort of rain
one could drown in it
without knowing

In the mountains an ark
skeleton of whale

Late night you can hear him on the radio
saying follow me or drown
I listen when I am out of coffee

I remember you filed
your nails with a file
that said “kiss me”

We called that rain lady rain
envied the leaves their shining

 

Melissa Tuckey is author of Tenuous Chapel, a book of poems selected by Charles Simic for the ABZ First Book Award in 2013. A Black Earth Fellow, she’s received support through a winter fellowship at Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and artist awards from Ohio Arts Council and DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Recent poems have appeared in Cutthroat, Kenyon Review, and Missouri Review. She is editor of Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, forthcoming in Winter of 2018 with University of Georgia Press. Follow her work at www.melissatuckey.net.