Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

Nocturne

A blue-eyed daughter grows
in my womb. Within hours
she turns five. She asks me
whether the ocean eats the earth
or the earth eats the ocean.

I tell her—We all hunger.

I feed her apricots, oatmeal,

braid her hair, sing a lullaby:

When the dream breaks,
the cradle will fall,
and drown will come daily,
no baby—no caul.

Lisa J. Sullivan holds an MFA in Poetry from the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program, where she was a Kurt Brown Memorial Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Comstock Review, Evening Street Review, Third Wednesday, Common Ground Review, and elsewhere. She was the United States winner of The Poetry Project–Ireland in collaboration with the Academy of American Poets. Sullivan’s debut poetry collection is Theory of Impact (Lily Poetry Review).

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx