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