Sonya Taaffe

False Lights

The ghosts crash out of the fog
like a grounding steamer,
scatter twitching as storm-downed gulls on the rocks.
Before dawn, we will search the torn nets of their faces
for a bone pin of memory,
a last will's clinging word,
their driftwood ribs for a sea-glass jewel of love.
Too long on this shore
and the careless tide will whelm us,
wrecked on the lanterns of our longing hearts.

Sonya Taaffe's short fiction and poetry can be found in the collections Ghost Signs (Aqueduct Press), A Mayse-Bikhl (Papaveria Press), Postcards from the Province of Hyphens (Prime Books), and Singing Innocence and Experience (Prime Books), and in various anthologies including The Humanity of Monsters, Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place, and Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror. She is currently senior poetry editor at Strange Horizons; she holds master's degrees in Classics from Brandeis and Yale and once named a Kuiper belt object. She lives in Somerville with her husband and two cats.