On the Borderline

Jeannette de Beauvoir

POETRY / Spring 2026 Literary Series

Jeannette de Beauvoir wrote a lot of bad, self-referential, derivative, and overly dramatic poetry in her teens—and then didn’t return to the genre for thirty years, during which she wrote novels instead (that were a lot less self-referential, derivative, etc.). Her poems are generally somewhat bleaker than her murder mysteries. Some people find that odd.

https://www.jeannettedebeauvoir.com/

Image from Pixabay

Ancient cartographers knew the danger 
of living on the edge: they warned 
of dragons beyond. Submerged, invisible, 
waiting for the unwary step, the bold 
enterprise, waiting

to strike. 

There is no borderline so mysterious 
as that between earth and sky, between 
lover and beloved, between reality
and fantasy. We invent paths through 
liminality, thinking we can escape its 
pull, closing our eyes, wanting only 

the clarity of the obvious. The edge is too
dangerous, too unknown. 

In my seaside town we live on that same edge 
of danger, coming here to heal, or to die, 
or to find something we’ve always imagined
exists. We’ve come here for centuries, looking 
for poetry, love, redemption, peace—
or perhaps only the fish:

something we think this place can give. But
like the man said, if you don’t bring it here, 
you won’t find it here.

                                  ***

Here as in every liminal space dragons guard 
the portals: fiery and luminous, they surface 
out of dark shadowed dreams, dancing through 
our restless nights like mourners at some 
demented jazz funeral. They can neither 
be ignored nor fully remembered:

There are only questions on the borderline.

---

Contributor’s Notes

On the Borderline comes out of my fascination with liminal spaces and my understanding that I live in one of them—Provincetown is Land’s End, and attracts the kinds of people who are most comfortable on the threshold: the curious, the creative, sometimes even the broken. But anyone who comes here looking for answers will be disappointed, because liminal spaces challenge, bewilder, question... they’re always in motion, always fragmented, never comforting. The only peace one can find in these spaces—and they needn’t be physical—is in listening to what they’re teaching us.