AT EDIZ HOOK

We chase the sun until it spits
and sputters on the line, past the paper mill
chain smoking the horizon, red stop light
flashing like a long pull in the dark. Gulls
swarm, die cast across a felted sky,
logs stacked in quiet yards, like toothpicks
on a diner counter. Death, dressed
in a skeleton sweatshirt leans
against the bones of beached trees,
cracks a beer along the shore. We watch
although we know how it will end: old boats
tucked into narrow beds, the moon
pulling the tide like a blanket to a chin.

Nina C. Peláez (www.ninapelaez.com) is a poet, essayist and educator based in Maui, HI where she works as Associate Director for The Merwin Conservancy. A Best New Poets and Best of the Net nominee, recent work appears or is forthcoming in journals including The Atlantic, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative, Rattle, Waxwing, Willow Springs, Pleiades, diode, Swamp Pink, & Verse Daily, among others. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Bennington College where she was a 2025 Alumni Teaching Fellow. She also mentors for The Adroit Journal and is a Tin House Reading Fellow.