Cyanosis | Audrey Walls

Audrey Walls' poetry has found homes in Cream City Review, H_NGM_N, Meridian, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a 2015 Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net 2014, and Best New Poets 2013. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s MFA program, she lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she serves as poetry editor of failbetter.     Little Ghosts          Cape Fear River, North CarolinaIn your lungs, you held hurricanes,the sand-water cough still breathing.We escaped the high water that tunneleddown Front Street. They were nothingcompared to the bagyos that laceratedthe archipelago you called home as a child. Our backs to the concrete, we traced ourselves in chalk. Here is wherewe will die. Here we will be little ghosts. I brushed back your hair & circled your head with white gritty lines. Elbows juttingin moonlight. That night you taught me your tongue. I carry twin words as fishhooks in my lips: karagatan for the ocean& katawan for the rake of y