Poetry By Beth Dulin

Doug Butchy CC




On Your Birthday

You, a Christmas Eve baby, 
but with no time left to celebrate. 
Now it’s a slow-motion drag of days 
until the 24th. 

No hazy glow of colored lights or 
bayberry candles burning. No smoky 
crowd in the overheated living room. 
No party dresses, stolen cigarettes, 

or lipstick-smeared glasses of Vititus. 
No secret glances in your direction. 
This year we are the same age. 
You stopped being older than me. 

You stopped being. 

Had I known that day, I would have 
spoken different words. Had I known, 
I would have followed you out the door.




​
Aftermath 

When the hurricane came through, 
we bolted. A cover excuse to disappear. 

In his shit-brown Toyota Corona station 
wagon. They don’t make them anymore. 

I shouldn’t have let him drive. 
He was blown-out. Wide-eyed. 

I was unsure of what was happening. 
Just pieces of a memory--

a paper bag torn open on the sidewalk.
Foil potato chip wrappers spread about. 

The smell of creosote. Craving a cigarette 
but I quit years before. That’s all I remember. 

No such thing as a clean get away. I see his ghost 
wherever I go. Every night, I dream I’m dying. 




​
​Beth Dulin’s writing has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, Atlanta Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Gargoyle, Little Patuxent Review, New Directions for Women, New York Quarterly, and Wigleaf, among others. In March 2021, she was featured as Yes Poetry’s Poet of the Month. She is the winner of Eastern Shore Writers Association's 2023 Crossroads Poetry & Microfiction Contest. She is the author and co-creator of Truce, a limited-edition artists’ book, in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. A graduate of The New School, she lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Visit her online: https://www.bethdulin.com/