New Poetry by Doug Holder

Harbor Walk, South Boston

It was the smell
that briny
elemental sweat
of wizened hard rock
moss
tangled up in green seaweed
the white waterfall
splashing 
abandoning its load
in the placid canal.

I had to stop
the moment I smelled it.
It was something
that my father was drawn to
it righted his round shoulders
made his face crinkle with laughter.

That smell.
Emerging from the vaginal portals
that spray of light
slapping him with the doctor.
That smell
on his pleasuring hands
the troop ship
heading to the coast of France
the salt adding speckled white
and fright to
his stubble.

The smell. The sea.
His beginning.
The expansive horizon,
and the narrowing
end.

We spread his ashes
far up the Hudson
but we knew they would travel
to the seminal sea
and someday
that's where
I am 
meant
to be.


- Doug Holder 2019

Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, MA. He has recently collaborated with playwright Lawrence Kessenich on a new play based on a short story he wrote "The Patient." It is going to be published by the Presa Press, and  has had a staged reading at the Playwright's Platform in the Boston area. Holder's poem " Oh Don't She Said, It's Cold" adapted into a song by singer/songwriter Jennifer Matthews, will be preformed by the dance company "text moves" in the fall at various venues in the area. Holder is the arts editor of The Somerville Times, and teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, and Endicott College in Beverly, MA. He holds an MLA in literature from Harvard University.