Nocturne with High Waters 

Evan Wang

up and down the shoreline,

men who kiss men who don’t

kneel on the same white sand 

that waves rush in to pound,

lowering their heads before lapping 

with a bone-dry tongue, bone-white.

the cold, wet, seeping of sinking 

knees like so many nights before,

like what father do their sons at the 

pool to teach them how to swim.

now they mistake kiddie pools for 

the ocean. they do what they know 

is wrong. they do it all for love, so 

the sand has an imprint when their 

bodies are dragged out for love. 

salt in the water choking throats 

that some wish are still modulating 

the pitches of gurgles. men taken 

by the wrong waves rinsed and 

violated until they are broken 

and still, so much love. because in 

their hands are bottles full of texts. 

because the night is all day. because 

the ball in the sky is the same every-

where, is in someone’s view when a

soaked text is unfolded during the dry

spell of home. no harm done, just the 

kneeling all through the crashing, the 

groaning of trees in the forest behind, the 

salt-crusted lips by night’s end and begin-

ning. like every public shadow by the 

beach, they don’t need a face to love 

a name. they submerge their heads in 

their lover’s spit, the whole ocean of it.

Writer’s Notebook

The thing is, "Nocturne with High Waters" is a poem I never thought I would write. Not only is its subject matter trivial, which makes it all the more dangerous, but the hours spent writing it were also full of the question, why nocturne? What am I trying to conceal? What can only be seen at night? From these questions spring new life. While thinking about the works of Topaz Winters, Aidan Forster, and Ocean Vuong, metaphors naturally emerged in the scenery, and the poem took on its amorphous and repetitive shape, describing the mundane act of loving through texts despite the original intent being one driven by the desire for more touch. I have been insecure about this poem for many months, thinking that what was being actively concealed is now too obscure, and that’s the thing—what is ordinary is never so. There are high waters all around, hour after hour, and men at the shore we mistake for love. 

About the writer