2024 Online Contest Poetry Winner: Half Brother (Letter to Eli)

The last time I was in a boat, I was in a boat.

Being a baby, I think, was like that–
looking up and out
at something like a sea wall

feeling waterlogged
feeling nearly extinct

my face shiny like a seal’s face.

And every day, no matter how it started,
smelling, eventually, of wood chips.

Things I couldn’t understand
governed me:

maritime law
having a spoon and dropping it
my very tiny sunglasses in their very tiny case.

What else?
I was extremely bald.
A seagull could have lifted me.

My moms hung blankets
over the sun.

The days were long
like dental floss.

My childhood was like
loving the dog so much you licked him.

What was it like for you?

(Sometimes,
my hands were like seashells––

once I found them I couldn’t put them down)

Luci Arbus-Scandiffio is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets, Bennington Review, Greensboro Review, and Copenhagen. Luci has two lesbian moms, and is originally from New Jersey.