1 mighty ocean
3 million grains of sand
11 towels dotting the shoreline
30 feet from the lifeguard stand
2 lifeguards, gabbing
1 expectant mother, resting
2 prayers said for husband at
1 interview that morning
1 brand new cell phone
15 times checked
0 calls or messages
from 1 husband, delayed
1 engine roaring
8 beeps while backing up
2 tires crunching
2 victims, surviving
1 mighty ocean
3 million grains of sand
11 witnesses, yelling
1 ambulance, wailing
all prayers, answered.
My lifeguard stand.
Lupita Eyde-Tucker is a bilingual poet and translator raised in New Jersey and Guayaquil, Ecuador. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Florida, and the winner of the 2021 Unbound Book Festival Emerging Poet Award. Lupita also won the 2019 Betty Gabehart Prize, and in 2018 was selected as an AWP Writer to Writer Mentee by poet Maggie Smith. In 2020-21 her chapbook manuscript was a finalist in the Black River Chapbook Competition, Frontier Poetry's Chapbook Contest, and Gloria Anzaldúa Prize, and a runner-up for the Chad Walsh Chapbook Prize from Beloit Poetry Journal. She is currently a staff scholar at Bread Loaf Translators Conference and Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and a scholarship recipient from the 2021 New York State Summer Writers Institute.