Coney Island Creek

         (How did the water smell?)

Estuary with fish tang, a funk. Pluff mud,
decayed spartina grass and sewage.
We smell the creek before we see it,
greeted by an egret flying low to its perch.
Nearby ship ribs rise, a ghostly flotilla.
The underwater wrecks tucked inside
this soft barrier of salt marsh.
People in the water, too— 
fishermen, swimmers, a baptism.
Even volatile organic compounds
can’t keep them away. The seekers we play
while the black locust trees chatter
beside this once tidal strait,
precarious, resilient, unfurling.

Susan (Sue) Landers (she/her) is the author of Franklinstein (Roof Books, 2016), a multi-genre collection about a Philadelphia neighborhood wrestling with the legacies of colonialism, racism, and capitalism. She is also the author of two full-length books of poetry—248 mgs., a panic picnic (O Books, 2003) and Covers (O Books, 2007). Her chapbooks include 15: A Poetic Engagement with the Chicago Manual of Style (Least Weasel, 2011) and What I Was Tweeting While You Were On Facebook (Perfect Lovers Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Poem-A-Day, The Brooklyn Rail, The Offing, and elsewhere. She was the founding editor of the experimental poetry journal POM2. She was a 2018 artist in residence at PLAYA Summer Lake and a 2015 resident fellow at Saltonstall Colony for the Arts. She has an MFA from George Mason University and lives in Brooklyn.