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Nocturne with Surfboard

"An off-black sheet grows behind us on the thing we call the horizon."

Published onJul 19, 2023
Nocturne with Surfboard

Photo by alexandre saraiva carniato: Pexels.com

We paddled into a night tide that never wanted us.
For three hours, we duck-dived and turtle rolled
popping up for air amidst the salt-foam.
The beach turning black as the sun lost its way
on some Western mission. This was good.
It meant the Atlantic was ours, at least for a while
and so we took it, digging our hands
swiftly but quietly into the tide trying to discern wave,
from shadow, from sky. There is a certain agreement
that one thing is not another. That between breaks
we sit quietly. That we don’t dare threaten the air
with a word and that when the time comes,
one of us moves into the line. An off-black sheet grows
behind us on the thing we call horizon.
I find myself on the curl, tipping over its edge
then falling but with a different sort of acceleration
a vicious velocity the kind that might
be happening overhead if we looked up instead of out.
If we did, we’d find the meteors are doing the same
eating themselves until there is nothing left.


Anastasios Mihalopoulos is a Greek/Italian American from Boardman, Ohio. He holds a BS in both chemistry and English from Allegheny College and is currently an MFA candidate in the Northeast Ohio MFA consortium. He also serves as the poetry center assistant for Etruscan Press. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Foothill Poetry Journal, Jenny Magazine, West Trade Review, Helix Literary Journal, The Decadent Review, The Great Lakes Review, and elsewhere.

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