Lars Thomsen

Back when I had two legs, I would have swum to the mainland just to get off this island
But my grades were terrible, my savings nonexistent
Options were limited

So I traded the ocean for the desert and my hockey stick for a rifle
While my friends were busy pledging frats and hooking up
I was living in a tent near Fallujah with six other guys and spiders as big as fucking squirrels

I grew to hate the sun and the heat and the blinding light
The way sand clung to my lips and eyelids and got stuck in my teeth

Dodging bullets
Firing bullets
Sweating bullets

I had nine days to go when the IED took out Kolchecki, Barnes, a chunk of my face, and my legs from the knees down
I was the only one that survived
If you can call it that

I spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's in the Green Zone casualty unit
Then another two months in Walter Reed
Cursing myself and everyone around me as I figured out how to walk again

The plastic surgeons did what they could with my face
Which hadn't exactly been GQ material to begin with
But the scars are still there
And so are the nightmares that leave me drenched

Days are better, though
The sun is just a suggestion here
The tides run like clockwork
People leave me alone
If anything, they avoid me

I pass my long afternoons with Crane
At least I know he's not staring at my face
He mends his nets and I strum my old guitar while the wind chimes swing back and forth
And for a while, I can forget

Mark Fenner

Unknown

The dry wind came back today, a trace of smoke on its heels
I'd almost forgotten what it smelled like

I inhaled deeply and felt dormant embers catch and flare inside me
Fourteen years burning up in a matter of seconds

Back then I had thought that perhaps things were over
That things had ended badly, but ended nevertheless

Perhaps not

Tomas Silva

We all knew that the Izabel was going down
We all knew that we were going down with her

The eight of us gathered below deck
Rough men, seasoned sailors
Taking burning swigs of aguardente as we passed the bottle around
Listening to the wooden planks creak and snap as the wind screamed through the sails above

I'd always known that I'd die at sea
Better there than landlocked in a lifeless marriage
Better there than anchored to a woman
who didn't know me at all

Marcos stared at me from across the table
Set his glass down with deliberation
Pushed his chair back
Strode off wordlessly to his berth below

I rose uncertainly, torn
Even in this final hour
Even in these last few minutes
Still hesitating

And then my heart rose up into my mouth
Buoyed from where I had buried it many dark fathoms below
Hidden for so many years
Pickled in saltwater

I turned from the table, ignoring the stares of the other men
I made my way through the darkness and the muffled crashing of waves from above
He was there in the flickering candlelight
Waiting for me with a sad smile on his bearded face

Molly Crenshaw

My father took me down to the beach the day the whales washed up
Globicephala macrorhynchus-- forty-two of them
They lay there in the withering August sun
Jet black and beginning to bake
Heaving as their lungs slowly collapsed under their own weight

Others lay still as Daddy picked his way around their immobile bulks with me riding high on his shoulders
The tide had crept in that morning and drowned some of the whales as they lay foundering
Beached there on the shores of a cruel universe filled with sand and sky and blazing heat

There's a picture of me from that day
Snapped by my father as he watched me whispering softly to one of the whales, unaware

My red hair is streaming behind me in the wind
My small hand caressing the whale's side as I murmur words of comfort
Confident as only a six-year old can be in my power to heal

Today that photo sits on my desk in the marine biology department
Sometimes, when discussion of research and labwork and grants becomes tedious
My eyes wander to it

I think of my father, standing out of sight behind the camera,
watching over me as he always did

I think of him laying there in the hospital bed toward the end
My hand caressing his cheek as I murmur words of comfort 
Quietly singing my whale song to him

Toshiya Kobayashi

You can take your island gossip and cram it
I'm no blushing mail order geisha from Kyoto
I didn't marry him for my green card
And I never used to be a man

When Finn walked into that dive outside of Tokyo, fresh off a commercial trawler
And reeking of dead fish and sake
I knew I would spend the rest of my life with him
It was that simple

From the stage I locked eyes with the tall bearded New Englander
I was doing Proud Mary that night
Five foot two in my six inch heels
Five foot seven if you counted the Tina wig
And I was rolling on the river

We got married the next morning
He sold everything he owned and bought his own boat
And I left my good job in the city
And together we traveled the seas

We washed up on the Jig when the money ran out
The island needed a ferry captain and Finn needed a job
Now the Proud Mary makes six runs a day
And I perform below deck at noon, three, and seven o'clock on weekends

Every night Finn turns the wheel over to Skip to watch my last show
I can see that his beard has become streaked with gray
And my legs aren't what they used to be

But still he smiles from across the room
And we are kids again
Back across two oceans in a small bar west of Tokyo

William Hayward

By the time that I crawled out of the Plymouth
I knew that Laurel was dead

This little white girl from an unbelievably white family
Lay sprawled a few feet away from the edge of the Clay Cliffs
Jagged diamonds of windshield glass in her hair
Caught the last of the sun's rays as it winked out over the ocean

I held my palm to my forehead, watching the blood drip down
into the soil of my people
We were on reservation land still,
about two miles from the town line

This was not a good place for an island girl to turn up dead
And drunk
In the car of her equally drunk Indian boyfriend.

It wouldn't matter that she had been the one driving
Or that she had been the one that had downed a fifth of Jack Daniels
Followed by a few pearly pills filched from her mother's bedside drawer

It wouldn't matter

I stumbled home for three miles in the dark,
bleeding and crying and cursing
Knowing my life here was over

They would come for me
Not Sherriff Milchin, whose jurisdiction ended back at the town line
Not the feds from the mainland, who always came late if at all

They would come for me filled with rage and grief and a desire for vengeance
And I'd be found swinging from a tree
Or maybe not found at the bottom of the bay

Suzie DeLuca

When things started burning down, I was pretty sure I knew who was doing it
I watched and I waited
I kept my suspicions to myself.

I liked having a secret
They're hard to come by in a tiny little high school
On a tiny little island filled with tiny little minds

It all felt so grown-up and sexy and dangerous
A little thrill going through me each time the police sifted through the ashes
On the eleven o'clock news

I was smarter than them
I had it all figured out
Rehearsing my dramatic press conference daily in third period algebra

I poked around in dark corners
Looking for evidence that would prove me right
I found it

And they found me the next morning, in the smoldering remains of the old post office

Doherty Crane

I've lived on the Jig my entire life
And I've never once seen the ocean

We're acquainted, though

I can feel its tides rise and ebb in in my blood, filtering through my organs and bones
I know its salt spray smattering my lips and its wind ripping at my hair

I know the dull clang of the buoys in the harbor at night
The canvas flags snapping in a stiff spring breeze
The jagged ice floes grinding and scraping against the rocks in the winter

I can read the sea's moods
My joints contracting and expanding like a coiled metal barometer
Alerting me to nor'easter and fair weather alike

I would have made such a good sailor if things had been different

Once when I was a boy, my parents sent me away to the mainland
Where patient nuns smelling of chalk and peppermint
And sometimes bourbon
Would guide my fingers
Over oceans of raised dots

But when evenings came I lay awake, floating in blackness, adrift
Drowning without my foghorn to guide me through the night

I only lasted a week

I cried all the way home on the ferry
My parents mistaking my tears for shame
It wasn't, though
It was profound relief at feeling the waves slap against the hull
And smelling the diesel fumes of the engine
And hearing the gulls shriek overhead

That was forty-four years ago

Now I spend my days on the porch mending fishermen's nets
And my nights by the window where the lighthouse's beam
Sweeps through the double darkness that surrounds me

I am anchored
I am home

Amelia Silva

Sixteen nights I paced the widow's walk
Scanning the indifferent waves for signs of your return

Sixteen days I prayed in church
My rosary cutting into my palms like mackerel teeth

I clung to the memory of my Tomas standing there on the deck of the Izabel
The other sailors' wives watching with envy as you blew me a kiss with a rakish grin

That was the last time I saw you
That was the last time I saw myself

I was only twenty-six, beautiful and too proud to accept consolation
Holding my head high in town, pouring myself into my bakery and my children

I gorged on bitterness and linguica and malassada
I became fat on sweet bread and nata and regret

Men no longer pursued me
They whispered and laughed behind my back

Years passed, the children deserting the island one by one
I grew too heavy to climb the stairs to the widow's walk

I ate myself into an early grave
The diggers remarking that I wouldn't have fit were it not for your empty plot

Now I lay here in the hill, still alone
The dull thudding of the surf traveling to me through the ground

Scott McAllister

It's not too late to jump ship
Metaphorically, I've done it before
Fourteen years ago on this very same ferry boat--
But in the opposite direction

The sky above is a slate gray, the ocean equally opaque
Behind, the mainland has disappeared
Ahead, there is no horizon
I am in limbo
Sling an albatross around my neck
Toss me a U.S.S Titanic life preserver
Call me Ishmael

My six hundred dollar Italian sunglasses offer no protection
The old woman feeding the gulls bits of puffed cereal is on to me

She steals glances as she slowly poisons the birds with green clovers and blue marshmallow diamonds
I recall vague urban legends of pigeons and Alka-Seltzer
I envision the gulls exploding in masses of half digested sugar and feathers
The thought does not displease me

I feign interest in the solid gray mass of clouds and water off the starboard bow
My disguise has failed
I can't make myself taller
I can't hide the cane that has become my third leg since the shooting
I can't erase my picture from the front of the Boston Globe and New York Times

"Scottie? Scottie McAllister?"

I cringe, the childhood name piercing me more than the bullet did
The Jig is full of ghosts
Unfortunately, most of them are still alive