Photography © Chad Parenteau

 

Swim Class at the Y

I wouldn’t walk the plank
and, thrown in, sank
like a pup. I couldn’t wring a breath
from the blue.

The coach held out his hand
like God (my distress
in his eyes), and I climbed
from the sea, like Man, never
to return.

In the Sistine Chapel, such
is the spark, I imagine,
when God and Adam reach,
their fingers almost touching—
the rapport, the surety, the love
that holds on, like a lifeguard,
and pulls you out.

 

Ken Anderson won the Saints & Sinners Playwriting and Louisiana College Writers Fiction and Drama contests and Grand Prize, as well as Louisiana State University’s Caffee Medal for prose. He was a finalist in the Saints & Sinners Poetry Contest, the Ferro-Grumley Award, and the Independent Publishers Book Awards.

Chad Parenteau is Associate Editor of Oddball Magazine.