- The Colony at Malibu
Glassy-eyed on Scotch, my brother and I watchedthe electric faces of waves, and I said that nobodyreally gets drunk in poems anymore and gets away
with it. Not like William Matthews did. But weare drunk, he said, and getting away with itat this borrowed château in the colony.
We all harbor a private sadness, I said.Melancholia, he said. Melancholia, I said.Melancholia, confirmed the moon in Morse code,
and the ocean certainly knew what it felt like—eachwave another failed attempt at becoming. People here,I said, must take great pride in the celebrated virgins
of Pepperdine who graze in the pastureof finance and literature for all the practicalreasons. Was that Keats? he asked as he poured
a few neat fingers of Glenmorangie Artein.Keats had the heart of a sparrow, I said, alwayssniveling over the things he would never have.
Like this beach, he said. Like these waves, I said. [End Page 113]
Travis Mossotti was awarded the 2011 May Swenson Poetry Award by contest judge Garrison Keillor for his first collection of poems, About the Dead. He also has published a chapbook, My Life as an Island. Currently he resides in Saint Louis with his wife, Regina, and their daughter, Cora.