Boardwalk at Daytona Beach

44 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW HELEN DEGEN COHEN BOARDWALK AT DAYTONA BEACH Palm Villa Vista. We were starved for sea-shells. In a bath of glandular light long, long play carpet, great eye of arcades, foot long hot dogs, mustard, deep fried ambrosia, the child lit on a frozen banana. . . In the blackness, the ocean dies away a smudge-queen, dragoness dumping her broken seashells in the dark. Slick night-bitten balm smoke-sea, red-gritted sandWe move like sweet quicksand. As heavy to boil and to move, like a thick dream with the excitement of burial of being buried in quicksand and stiU alive a hot spine in a cool wet mass. This quickening is no gasp at die Rockies. No crisp cuts and lakes here, we are treading sherbert water, a heavy man-made quickening lollying in a bath of warm frosting, pastels are the medium—they wear off, children, I tell them, thinking chalk, floury stuff. A man in a cage screams to be dropped in a bucket of water. Hit the releasing device !-hit it squarely !with sweet anger!—hit the monkey-see laughter. . . He is a genuine monkey. You bastards, you dip-heads, you square baboons, Georgia Crackers, you Georgia Crackers!-he screams. The children are glued to a large, frozen smile. They don't move, they only look at us, COHEN 45 truly arrested. Music, it may be music we are missing, the kind the air might spill out of itself like a clean brilliance—I breathe water here. We were starved for seashells. In my own mind, suddenly, in my own mind, Venus erupted fragrant, northernVenus of the North Pole!—smooth milk sculpture sand like harem skin, cool—a masterpiece— perhaps the North Pole gives off sea-shellshere they are crushed to organic dust or made into toy ships. . . or. . . And yet, this is an immersion in a shell, a razz-ma-tazz sea-buzz globular lobe with fireworks of ice-cream and fizz and the fizz is truly pink! ...