Detail | Elizabeth Savage

Elizabeth Savage is a professor of English and poetry editor for Kestrel at Fairmont State University in West Virginia. Her most recent poetry and criticism appear in Denver Quarterly, Hotel Amerika, Journal of Modern Literature, and Quo Anima: Innovation & Spirituality in Contemporary Women’s Poetry. Detail is her second chapbook with Dancing Girl. In 2020, Furniture Press will publish Daylight Scoured, her third book of poems.    Pacific Night begins chopping apart the next day, underdressed, the will pressed, the endof the line. Salt moves mountains, then splits waves godless as the green. All intention is arranged by the effort. The oysters taste of it, seasoned with hesitationan ocean of refusal is what stood you here. Cut by wind reduced to reversals of light. Without a compass, no other place is in reach. Nowhere else is near but the wind, crowded with reflectionThe glinting beach empties of struggle. Oncethe fight readied your skin