Marcia B. Loughran won Mrs. Mott’s prestigious haiku prize in fifth grade at the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., and resumed her writing career thirty years later. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2013. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Spoon River Poetry Review and elsewhere. The author of two prize-winning chapbooks, Still Life with Weather and “My Mother Never Died Before” and Other Poems, Marcia reads her work in bars, bookstores and black-box theaters in New York City. Her third chapbook, Songs from the Back-in-the-Back, is now available for pre-sale orders from The Poetry Box. Marcia is a nurse practitioner and proud resident of Queens, NY.
Marcia B. Loughran reads “Rockaway Beach”.
ROCKAWAY BEACH
one year after Hurricane Sandy
It’s September again, only the dogs
go barefoot. A distracted sun
glances back at summer;
leftover waves bump the shore.
The beach is bigger
without the people.
An occasional almond-roasted old man
(deckchair, radio)
points out pilot whales,
ignoring the pipeline which severs the view,
bulldozers, men in hard hats and yellow vests
rebuilding the sandcastle shore—
a million cubic yards of sand and broken shells
pumped in from miles away, under the ocean.
All night, backhoes beep.
Caution flags fly the parapets
of new boardwalks
named for streets that dead-end
in the sand. This is the opposite
of archeology. We who fear
the timelessness of seagulls,
try to hold still,
reconstructing memory—
this is how it was,
make it how it was.
Jets line up to land at JFK,
the A train rumbles by,
and always,
the shrugging sea.
Still Life With Weather, December 2016
Marcia Loughran
A
Beach 98 Street – Playland Stop
Check out more of the Queensbound project here.
Events
If you missed the September event, see Marcia read in the above YouTube video.
View the whole video here, or click to go to YouTube.
The Poetry Box LIVE – September Edition
September 11, 2021
ZOOM poetry reading series
4pm PST; 5pm (Mountain); 6pm (Central); 7pm (EST).
The entire show will be approximately 60 minutes.
Past Events
BENNINGTON WRITERS
Tuesday, March 23, 2021 – 7pm EST
Facebook Live
Link on the Bennington Writers FB page.
Please join these five formidable, yet genial, Bennington writers: Claudia Stanek, Marcia Loughran, Julia Pistell, Bree Wolfe, and Alex Dawson. V. Hansmann, host
The Poetry Box LIVE Zoom
Saturday, January 9, 2021
7pm (Eastern)