Sarah Stockton is the author of the chapbooks Time’s Apprentice (dancing girl press, 2021) and Castaway (Glass Lyre Press, 2022) and the full-length The Scarecrow of My Former Self (MoonPath Press, 2024), a finalist for both the Sally Albiso Award and the Washington State Book Award for Poetry. Sarah is the founder and EIC of River Mouth Review.

Her poems have appeared in About Place Journal, Glass Poetry, Blue Mountain Review, Crab Creek Review, Poetry Northwest, Whale Road Review, Psaltery & Lyre , and Rogue Agent, among others, including several anthologies.

Sarah Stockton lives on the Olympic Peninsula by the Salish Sea, in Washington state.

Sarah's web site

Pelican Crone Looks Back, No Salt

I’m not a daughter anymore, nor
the mermaid I had longed to be, a girl
with bone-bruised skin like speckled trout
or a nightclub dancer, all bleached hair
big eyes, and lip liner, nor a miniskirted
nosebleed bomber-jacketed, weed-smoking
silver-crossed and underfed girl riding the Golden
Gate bus, but she still lies alongside me
when I’m trying to sleep, blows clovescented
smoke against my neck, scratches
her chipped-polish nails against the soft
folded skin layering my ribs, belly, and back.
She is mine. I am she. Curls her whiteand-
brown body around my fragile
hip bones, her webbed flat feet so cold
as we lay kissing beak to beak.

Stella Marina

They say when a starfish loses a limb
it grows another, can even shed on purpose—

sacrifice an arm or some spiny skin,
protecting the core as a survival measure

when its various parts are gobbled
by a sea otter, a hungry eagle.

A sea star will continue on—
regenerate organs, bright orange

and red, grow stronger
though forever scarred.

I’ve lost so many extensions of my life
that will never grow back.

I am untrained in the science
of restoration—perhaps

I should seek out a tidepool,
dip my star-shaped hand

in kelp-infused water, and wait.