Other Islands

By Stacey Gruver

"He isn’t the sea, but in his house she has shade.
She learns to breathe air. She learns to eat dust.”

Dana folds the linens, sweeps the floorboards, but she cannot ignore the call of the deep sea. She’s a lost mariner, a beached whale, a captured creature of the depths stranded on the shores of domesticity. This poetry collection explores hope, suffocation, and yearning by blending Dana’s waking and dream worlds into one vibrant, violent ecosystem. A place that feels like home but can never be returned to.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stacey Gruver
• Release date: Oct 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005575106

Stacey Gruver

Stacey Gruver is a poet and artist who lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a recipient of the Maryland Individual Artists Award, and her work has appeared in Noble / Gas Qtrly, The Puritan, and other fine publications. Her micro-chapbook Terrible Movies At Top Volume is available at Ghost City Press. She is the co-editor of the late, great nicecage.com. She lives on the web at staceygruver.com.

Book preview

Other Islands

Stacey Gruver

Copyright 2020 Stacey Gruver

Cover Design by Stacey Gruver

Distributed by Smashwords.

Love and gratitude to Izy Gruye and my family, without whom this book wouldn't be possible.

Table of Contents

Wild Caught

Beach Rescue

Proper Care and Feeding

Hygge

Hunger

Splinter

She Draws A Bath

Skin Care Routine

Bad Weather

Lying Ahull

Jellyfish

Giant Tube Worms

Fissures and Trenches

Osedax

Benthic Zone

Swimming

Beached

Deep Diver 1

Drifting

Other Islands

Teeth 1

Teeth 2

Stranded

Feast

Tunnels

Cleaner Fish

Migration

Boat

Noctiluca

Deep Diver 2

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Wild Caught

Dana doesn't remember how she got here, what she was before her husband found her. He hauled her from the depths, and she woke in his house.

Now, she's a starving blood fluke squirming down the house's dry veins. She thrashes against walls too thick to eat through. She slides over open thresholds that lead her back to the desiccated heart of the beast.

She can't find a way out.

She learns to breathe air, to eat dust.

Beach Rescue

A younger version of herself found herself beached on the shores of this dry world. Her husband found her. He brought shade, brought bottles of water, brought nets.

What other choice