Jagged with Love

Boca Chica, Playa de Republica Dominicana

Boca eRIca, PLaya De RepUBLIca DOllInIcana aFTer psaLm 93:3 It is here you know how innocuous your Indiana heart, chamber ofleaves, hickory shells, old, wet newspaper. Here you fmd the tell-tale nns of los tiburones thrilling out in the blue plashes. No one screams. One thrill is like another, you'd guess, as fragile as sugar packets between your nngers, twisted empty, each forgotten with the ticks ofyour wrist, the tongue's pleasant swipe. You might be allowed your imbecility against the noises of Boca Chica, her hospitable hush, hush, hush. Butyou didn't come to be comforted. Let's say you have left someone. Or someone has left you. The white battering sun teases this out in waves. The seas have lifted up, 0 LordLet 's say it was never about someone. Was it? Yes. Was it? No. In the raw squint of day you won't lie: you want comforted, you always have. God's nngers are in the water, The seas have lifted up their voicetickling the hard gray bellies of sharks. For a moment you miss the exquisite quirk of a word like shark in Spanish: it will translate tofish and swindler and expert. For a moment all you can think is your stupid wet feet, sucked into dark sand. your toes burrowing beside sand dollars in their muck-homes. your body falling slowly from your mind. a dark and muck of its own. The seas have lifted up theirpounding wavesLet 's say who you are is situated enough. Choose which cloud to follow and your neck will turn of its own accord. Choose tiburon or estafador orperito and there in the slow-rising bubbles ofyour heart you'll only have plunked in the ocean a toe. all flesh. uncanniness. ...