Shortlist Saturdays: Dead Reckoning by Dagne Forrest

Dead Reckoning

You’ve never gone to sea, but you’ve spent dark clots of time

adrift, translating sounds outside the window. These nights,

this winter rain, the Anthropocene inclined to being

ravishing and savage in equal measure. Drifting past the sink

each daybreak you see compost, when what you seek is compass.

You keep finding yourself on the same spot, no idea how you

got here. The dog stares from his bed, plush raft anchored

nearby; you know it’s time to head out. Your wanderings

looser lately, wondering how you’ll go when he’s not here,

how you’ll believe in spring or mornings. You can desire nothing

and yet still want to live, though it’s far from ideal. Far better

to spend the time composing imagined answers to the biggest

questions you can think of, or even comparing the gaits

and intentions of dogs and their humans on your daily rounds,

finding some way back to compassion for a world gone rancid.

Even in the rot there is light to be found, the flowering hues

within a bruise, the act of noticing. So hard to tell now

what acceleration looks like, the rippling shore less distant,

nodding your head in time like the tipping hourglass at sea,

the daily puzzling lasting long past first rising. Unspooling

the knots as you sustain your watch, keep counting on waking.

Dagne Forrest's poem Dead Reckoning place third in our 3rd Anniversary Poetry Contest! Dagne Forrest’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many literary journals including The New Quarterly, december magazine, Whale Road Review, Rust + Moth, Tar River Poetry, Rogue Agent, Pinhole Poetry, and elsewhere. She was selected as a finalist in the 2025 Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize by Maggie Smith. She belongs to Painted Bride Quarterly’s editorial and podcast teams. Her chapbook “Un / Becoming” is published by Baseline Press (2025).