Dani Dymond
Lighthouses
A bowl of lit wood and LA Times articles
popped below us on the sands of Long Beach.
Those pits illuminated like roaming dots
across the seaside, furious – floating – lanterns.
The bonfire clung to my hair, its ashes
peppering the strands. It gave you a glimpse
of our lives in later years, my youth
momentarily masked by the soot.
Your smile was a beacon in that night air,
the promise I needed, knowing that I’d be
sharing front porch rockers someday
with the man who grinned at me over flames.
Earth Pulses: Ode to Connecticut’s Sleeping Giant State Park
Muddy shoes have marked his body
with train-track zigzags of dirt. Alive
as you or I, he breathes in sighs of trees
and panoramic views of Connecticut.
He is called the Sleeping Giant, a green
silhouette of head, torso, and trunk.
We hike along this row of hills, placed
perfectly by whichever creator you may
believe in. Trails decorate his figure,
crisscrossing vessels between red pines
and black birches. A collection of granite
clusters quietly near his chest, pretending
to be a heart. It would beat in breezes.
The blood it might pump could be snow
melt, a thaw that gives life to the goliath
with each coming spring. His hibernation
ends as the chestnut oaks revive in leaves,
bringing back those colors the winter stole.
When a visitor ambles along these peaks,
they may stop mid-step to inhale: a single
cell, taking in the air, indulging in oxygen
as it glides through the anatomy of a giant.
Dani Dymond is a twenty-three-year-old college student majoring in English/Creative Writing and minoring in sleep deprivation. Her poetry has appeared in publications such as Young Ravens Literary Review, Outrageous Fortune, BuckOff Magazine, and The Bitchin’ Kitsch, as well as several university magazines, namely collections coming out of Santiago Canyon College, Asnuntuck Community College, and Southern Connecticut State University. She is a feminist, vegetarian, activist, and obsessive dog mom. While she wishes poets were paid in licorice and Netflix subscriptions, finishing her MFA at CSULB and teaching writing at the college level will wonderfully suffice.
Lighthouses
A bowl of lit wood and LA Times articles
popped below us on the sands of Long Beach.
Those pits illuminated like roaming dots
across the seaside, furious – floating – lanterns.
The bonfire clung to my hair, its ashes
peppering the strands. It gave you a glimpse
of our lives in later years, my youth
momentarily masked by the soot.
Your smile was a beacon in that night air,
the promise I needed, knowing that I’d be
sharing front porch rockers someday
with the man who grinned at me over flames.
Earth Pulses: Ode to Connecticut’s Sleeping Giant State Park
Muddy shoes have marked his body
with train-track zigzags of dirt. Alive
as you or I, he breathes in sighs of trees
and panoramic views of Connecticut.
He is called the Sleeping Giant, a green
silhouette of head, torso, and trunk.
We hike along this row of hills, placed
perfectly by whichever creator you may
believe in. Trails decorate his figure,
crisscrossing vessels between red pines
and black birches. A collection of granite
clusters quietly near his chest, pretending
to be a heart. It would beat in breezes.
The blood it might pump could be snow
melt, a thaw that gives life to the goliath
with each coming spring. His hibernation
ends as the chestnut oaks revive in leaves,
bringing back those colors the winter stole.
When a visitor ambles along these peaks,
they may stop mid-step to inhale: a single
cell, taking in the air, indulging in oxygen
as it glides through the anatomy of a giant.
Dani Dymond is a twenty-three-year-old college student majoring in English/Creative Writing and minoring in sleep deprivation. Her poetry has appeared in publications such as Young Ravens Literary Review, Outrageous Fortune, BuckOff Magazine, and The Bitchin’ Kitsch, as well as several university magazines, namely collections coming out of Santiago Canyon College, Asnuntuck Community College, and Southern Connecticut State University. She is a feminist, vegetarian, activist, and obsessive dog mom. While she wishes poets were paid in licorice and Netflix subscriptions, finishing her MFA at CSULB and teaching writing at the college level will wonderfully suffice.