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 her poems were finalists in the Sewanee Review Poetry Contest, Loraine Williams Poetry Prize, River Heron Review Poetry Prize, and her chapbook manuscript was a finalist in the Black River Chapbook Competition, Frontier Poetry's Chapbook Contest, and Gloria Anzaldúa Prize. 