Taking on the Local Color: Poems

On the Beach

On the Beach "This time I cannot touch the thick, limpid season of skin roiling the airwaves. Only hesitate between this thick braid and that, to caress to let go fluttering to wind and sea." She sits watching the pretty snout the dainty leg, the s-curve of ribcage bellowing out in the sea air, then shrinking. "Rib of Adam, this yellow dog has ribs. We're alike this little bitch and I. He larks in the sun, like me. He snaps at foam, wondering where the old waves go to die, to stack their pale blue skins." "Your imagination runs away with you," he says, pinked. By the sun, and being argued into argyle socks, into reading a book. "And why if it's a bitch do you say, 'he'?" "You hate my perfect skin," she says, "you burn, I blacken into beauty. My beauty leaves me breathless leaves me washed and wrung dry leaves me in the hamper, used and crumpled in the dark." She closes her magazine. "See how he snuffles, digging the wet sand to reach China, where there's a bone to pick? With Chinese tall as wheat. They've all become tall and handsome. It must be the diet." That summer she would eat rice and pull her eyes sideways. Wear blue worker suits and rubber thongs. Bangs. 60 60 On the Beach "This time I cannot touch the thick, limpid season of skin roiling the airwaves. Only hesitate between this thick braid and that, to caress to let go fluttering to wind and sea." She sits watching the pretty snout the dainty leg, the s-curve of ribcage bellowing out in the sea air, then shrinking. "Rib of Adam, this yellow dog has ribs. We're alike this little bitch and 1. He larks in the sun, like me. He snaps at foam, wondering where the old waves go to die, to stack their pale blue skins." "Your imagination runs away with you," he says, pinked. By the sun, and being argued into argyle socks, into reading a book. "And why if it's a bitch do you say, 'he'?" "You hate my perfect skin," she says, "you burn, I blacken into beauty. My beauty leaves me breathless leaves me washed and wrung dry leaves me in the hamper, used and crumpled in the dark." She closes her magazine. "See how he snuffles, digging the wet sand to reach China, where there's a bone to pick? With Chinese tall as wheat. They've all become tall and handsome. It must be the diet." That summer she would eat rice and pull her eyes sideways. Wear blue worker suits and rubber thongs. Bangs. She'd go banging on doors begging in inscrutable gibberish and finally, they'd lock her up. Throw the key to a group of perky dogs, who'd run tossing it from mouth to mouth. "I'm burned," he says, "I'm going in." "You never do," she answers, smiling an inscrutable smile down her shoulder, over it, watching her clever bitch run whining back to the car. 6l She'd go banging on doors begging in inscrutable gibberish and finally, they'd lock her up. Throw the key to a group of perky dogs, who'd run tossing it from mouth to mouth. ''I'm burned," he says, "I'm going in." "You never do," she answers, smiling an inscrutable smile down her shoulder, over it, watching her clever bitch run whining back to the car. 61 ...