“Annapolis, Maryland” by m01229 is licensed under CC BY 2.0
For sale at the arts market: golden Coors carved into blue crabs, lavender bundled from beachside gardens, Cheerio-shaped glass pendants—one sweet with the same amber color that black hair makes of the sun. Mosquitos snicker amidst the river of fresh legs, flickering at the liquid salt blooming on forearms and rosy necks. The few flashes of coolness cutting through the snaggletoothed heat: a free spot of covered parking, a middle school performance on timpani drums, tamarind shots poured by a sheepish bartender too young to know the taste. Sour, but not sharp enough. Still gentle like the oysters’ cool flesh, dancing one last dance beneath lemony rain. They arrive on a bed of ice, their shells jagged with tiny teeth. From the second floor of the restaurant during lunch’s waning hour
the Annapolis showboats
hug the harbor like favored
childhood toys
Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. She is the author of the chapbooks Not Flowers (Variant Literature, 2022) and There Are No Filipinos in Mississippi (Porkbelly Press, forthcoming). Her work can also be found in The Margins, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Baltimore Review, among others. She studies poetry in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi, where she is working to document and elevate stories of Filipino Americans in the Deep South.