Crest/Trough

Visual Poem

Hey! Hi! Hello!

I know it’s been pretty quiet on the posting new poems front lately. Well, that’s because I have a crap ton of things I’ve been quietly writing and editing and sending out submissions for. I may or may not have literally gotten a couple poems accepted when I started drafting this post! But you’ve got a poet and you need poems now. Well call me JG Poemsworth (I will attest the 2000’s commercials of my childhood were truly proto brainrot).

Earlier this month, my sister had a wonderful civil ceremony (congrats to her, yay!). During the reception dinner, a montage of childhood photos of both my sister and my now sister-in-law prompted me to ask my Mom if she still had pictures, and, well, hooooly crap did she! With my lovely summer break (it’s unpaid, and I have to split my paycheck weird to pretend like it’s not; don’t get too jealous), I spent a couple days combing through pictures. The draft y’all are about to read came out of stumbling upon what I’m pretty sure is a picture of me when I was maybe eight or nine. I’d almost completely forgotten about my Father (or maybe my Mom? oof) enrolling my sister and me in surfing classes, but here I am, somehow on that board:

Young Lee on a Surfboard ca. 2004 [Taken by my Mom or my Father, ooh, mysterious provenance]

Surfing was one of a few sports that my parents trialed upon me: some fledgling attempt with a baseball bat that flies out of my early childhood head, soccer, tennis, golf. Soccer stuck the longest, and I was still not exactly a fan, more like, air conditioner. But anyway, we’re here to surf through this poem draft, so let’s get into it:

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Crest/Trough

                                 F
      	                   ocus
                         on your
                  feet balancing
              on the board, your
        head in the sky, your legs
    dragging in the breeze off Atlantic
  Avenue. Refuse the crackle of heat in the
arms that paddled you, the dots of fire in your knees
yet to unbend them. Muffle your ears to the gasp of lungs
dampened in the foam set to replay. Shut your tongue to the wall of

salt crashed you to shore before the sun and waves crested.
Numb your toes to the barnacles of wax, your ankles to a
velcro band anchored you to some oversized tooth of terra infirma.

 	                F
                        lick          
                  the froth;
              it crests. A tear
        foams up the polyps of
       your bleached coral face. Sea
    weed eyelids flush back from the sun 
    when the tide rouses them, swell until they sway
    as if they’re more than a silhouette drowning the troughs

Context if you believe in not thrashing the author and leaving them to drown under the waves: I remember the majority of those surfing class sessions boiling down to pushing at the breaking waves, just for them to push me back. My sister had a much easier go of it, but at some point I eventually managed to catch enough for my Mom or Dad to get the picture I showed y’all earlier. Yes yes, obviously the speaker is not me, because I don’t have coral polyps all over my face; one can only dream.

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A Prompt: Write a poem where the speaker is engaged in some type of sport or physical activity. What sensations come to mind? Why did they always have oranges after the soccer games? No, seriously, tell me—or don’t! Feel free to message me and/or tag me if you end up using this prompt.

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