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Timothy Gager

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Into the Silent Sea

It’s so quiet down here, so quiet
you can’t hear the rage on the seawall

feel the twisting turn of your stomach,
the nervousness of nobody home.

The moon was not full today;
it was shaped like a heart

seen from the bottom. light diffracted
in a way that made you nauseous

spun down amongst lantern fish,
cookie cutter sharks

bristle mouths, anglers,
and viper fish, some sort of eelpout.

Nobody likes you, you say
to them, but you are here too,

like an incredible ship
sunken and abandoned.

Timothy Gager has published 18 books of fiction and poetry, which includes his latest novel, Joe the Salamander. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. He has had over 1000 works of fiction and poetry published, 17 nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work also has been nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award, The Best of the Web, The Best Small Fictions Anthology and has been read on National Public Radio. In 2023, Big Table Publishing published an anthology of twenty years of his selected work, with 150 pages of new material: The Best of Timothy Gager. He was the Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, and the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, Massachusetts.



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