Big Water

by Charles Musser

we tumble down

gitchigume's dunes

like jack pine logs

plume of sand rooster tail

raw-raked naked

spitting blood


she looms
before a surge
of combers
a headwhip back
at sun at moon foam cough
from sere lungs



then splits

zinnober waves knifes out

to breakers again and again



I carry ferns ripped

by root

past the high tide line a cant of heart
through seagulls wild

to tear Superior's hem


one moment quiet the next

a peal

of brass hammers

knocking skull


pinned between glacial

sands below

virid waves above

at last in numbing quiet then fumble

for the surface

stand upright on stones

slick as oil

we are

a butterbur bloom

of nerves

a twined timber-slant an agony of air

that jibes through the moon's mouth

in silver whorls

About the Author

Charles Musser attended Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, and St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. His work is featured in Mimesis, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review and Umbrella Magazine. Musser is the 2008 winner of The Round Table Review Russian Sonnet Contest.

322 Review publishes provocative emerging and established artists. Conceived and operated by former Rowan University graduate students of the Master of Arts in Writing Program, 322 Review is aggressively seeking the best fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and mixed media works of visual art.