KATIE MANNING
On Our Twenty-Year Dating Anniversary
You joke that we’re returning
the fish to the sea when we
bring our poke out to Ocean
Beach and rush across hot
sand with our picnic blanket.
We can’t return to our old
spot: the condemned cliff
that already had a warning
sign when we used to climb
the rail to have a picnic,
watch fireworks, or propose.
Now the cliff is crumbling,
so we set up near the newly
repaired pier. We trade bites
of spicy tuna for ginger
salmon, and we cringe
together as surfers slide
under the pier, narrowly
missing the gray pillars
from our perspective.
We’ve had enough risk.
We turn north instead
to watch a man throw
a boomerang out over
the waves, the ancient
weapon enchanting us
with its gyroscopic
precession. It spins
impossibly high, then
arcs behind him, and
then, somehow, he
holds it in his hands.
We joke that we need
to take photos so we
can remember this
after another twenty
years, but we’ve been
together long enough
to know we mean it.
Katie Manning is a poet, professor of writing at PLNU, and founding editor of Whale Road Review. She’s the author of Tasty Other, which won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and her most recent collections are Hereverent (Agape Editions, 2023) and How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press, 2022). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on season 3 of the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in American Journal of Nursing, The Lascaux Review, New Letters, Poet Lore, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Find her online at katiemanningpoet.com.