Beside the sea, before I was born,
a man spit on my parents for holding hands.
Back for winter, I walk along the shore
toward the delta’s brackish span. Farther:
the airport, the suspension bridge, the blurred
lights of the city where I was born,
where a friend once asked if I ever
asked my dad to check his privilege. Wind
veins the water. Driftwood piles on the shore.
Estuary
Michael Prior
Michael Prior's poems have appeared in the New Republic, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Narrative, the Academy of American Poet's Poem-a-Day series, and the Asian American Writers' Workshop's The Margins. He is the author of Burning Province (McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House 2020) and Model Disciple (Véhicule Press 2016).