Before the Pool, there was a Saltwater Lagoon by Sarah Bitter a response to Gyula Kosice’s Variation in Blue Men leave me alone now, mostly, and they have left me (at) an old blue swimming pool far into a park on the shore of Puget Sound. I have to walk through a forest and down an escarpment to get there. When I think of the men, I think of the blue of that pool and I am happy, mostly. I like to swim at dawn when the mist rises off the water and blurs the edges of sea and sky. After I swim, I walk back up the bluff, into the cedars and that smell—humus and trees in full green, at the edge of the dry season—is the smell of dying.
Hear Sarah Bitter recite the poem on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast:

Six Poets Recite (Durell Carter / Sarah Bitter / David Radavich / Mary Amato / Jai-Michelle Louissen / Nicole Farmer) – Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast
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Sarah Bitter lives in Seattle with her partner, daughter, and dogs. Her work has been published in The Seventh Wave, River Mouth Review and Poetry Northwest, and is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly’s FIVES and Slipstream. She has an MFA degree from the University of Washington.
Instagram: sarahjbitter