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Cynthia Huntington

Cynthia Huntington is the author of four books of poetry—Heavenly Bodies, a finalist for the National Book Award, The Radiant, The Fish-Wife, and We Have Gone to the Beach—as well as a prose memoir, The Salt House. A former New Hampshire State Poet Laureate, she is professor of English at Dartmouth College, where she serves as senior faculty in creative writing. She served as chair of the Poetry Jury for the Pulitzer Prizes in Poetry for 2006.

Dead Shark at New Beach

Name synonymous with hunger, carnage, / but this one was peaceful, floated near the waves’ surface, / sweeping the water open-mouthed for plankton and krill.

Famine Ships

They came on ships, each of them, / everyone who was not born here, for centuries they, that is, we, came / here on ships. The ocean between worlds, empty for thousands of miles.