Cheryl Julia Lee (b. 1991)
SELECTED POEMS
Have you heard the tongues of the waves
Have you heard the tongues of the waves before? my old captain asks of me. Yes, I reply, in the belly of my mother’s washing machine, which she stuffs nightly with sweat-stained clothes, and socks, and underthings. I hear them echo like a prayer call I am not yet ready to answer. Do you ever wish you could quiet the waves? Young thing, he says, you don’t know. Few things there are in this world more terrifying than a silent sea.
by Cheryl Julia Lee
first published in Icarus (Issue LXVI, Volume I, 2015)
