Liz Dolan’s second poetry manuscript, A Secret of Long Life, which is seeking a publisher, was nominated for the Robert McGovern Prize. She has been published in On the Mason Dixon Line: An Anthology of Contemporary Delaware Writers. A five-time Pushcart nominee, she won an established artist fellowship from the Delaware Division of the Arts in 2009. She recently won a prize for prose from The Nassau Review. Liz serves on the poetry board of Philadelphia Stories.
A Half Block Behind Him on the Boardwalk
the father shadows his autistic son
now twenty, his head down, shoulders hunched.
T. J. pushes through the summer
crowds like the crest of a wave
listens to the flat slap of his sandal.
The latitude of the ten thousand and two boards
and the longitude of the shiny nails
mark the knots in the piney wood swirling like islands
and bodies of water on the map hanging in his room
where he goes and locks the door behind him.
The tag on the back of his tee shirt
a small red sail flapping at his neck.
Hyperlexia Journal 
