Sarapiquí
Emily Van Kley | Poetry
Crabs emerged from the beach
at night, blue in aggregate.
Bats danced over our beds like ash
over fire.
When I cheered, the kingfisher
startled, dropped its dinner.
A certain amount of discomfort
was to be expected.
I’m suggesting we deserved
the tributary’s clouds of mosquitos,
the cayman in the shallows
with its sinuous eye.
I grew up hating tourists.
I have always been a tourist.
The glass-winged butterfly
drinks poison to make itself bitter.
The basilisk lizard runs over water,
picking up skirts.
Even water can be fooled
by a very holy name.
Emily Van Kley is a queer poet and circus artist currently based in Olympia, Washington. Her poetry collections are The Cold and the Rust (2018), winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, and Arrhythmia (2022), both from Persea Books. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry and Best New Poets, and has received the Loraine Williams Prize for Poetry, the Iowa Review Award, and the Florida Review Editor’s Award among other honors. When not writing, Emily can often be found teaching or performing aerial acrobatics as a member of Airbound Underground.