POETRY

By Al Maginnes

We’d decided we didn’t need
the new guy before he arrived.
But he was a good worker,
good enough for some of us
to recon­sid­er letting him go.
Until the morning he began
to speak from nowhere about
zebras and their yearning
for the sea. How they feel
tides thick as the moon pulling
in their veins and bones.
How they would, given the chance,
crowd the shore­lines, strip coastal plains
of their tough vegetation.
It was ances­tral he went on,
a spark born from Noah putting
that single long-ago pair
of zebras in a boat with nothing
to do but watch the slap and chop
of water. And the plains
they returned to, their endless wavering,
remind­ed them enough of the sea
that all zebras since are born
with a taste for seaweed deep
in their throats. He might have
con­tin­ued all day but someone took him
through a door and that was all
we saw of him. Today, I’m staring
out the top floor window, hoping for
a view that sees further than this,
sees a coast­line where zebras gallop,
their manes flecked with sea foam and sand.

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 18.

Photo by Jayden Brand.