Ghazal for a Sea Journey, by Jessica Goodfellow

Jessica Goodfellow’s books are Whiteout (University of Alaska Press,
2017), Mendeleev’s Mandala (2015), and The Insomniac’s Weather Report
(2014). She’s had work in Best New Poets, The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily,
and Motionpoems. Last summer she was a writer-in-residence at Denali
National Park and Preserve.


About the poem:
I wanted to write a ghazal because I never had before. I loved the idea of internal
rhyme in each stanza, so I played with that, and eventually a seafaring theme
emerged.