‘The first boy that I dated weighted down his coif / with so much hair gel that the crest atop his pate / was hard as horses’ teeth’
September 29, 2015
Death Anniversary
After your suicide by drowning,
the whales refrained from beaching
on this coast for one thousand mornings.
But some scores cannot be evened.
The First Time I Saw the Sea
The first boy that I dated weighted down his coif
with so much hair gel that the crest atop his pate
was hard as horses’ teeth. But the first man I loved
had curls so soft and yielding, sea-wind seemed to sit
nestled at all times in their depths.
I asked him, once, to drive me to a beach. I hoped
to see hot conch-strewn sand unfurl before my vision
like a bronze sarong warmed by the body it once draped.
But the beach he drove me to was stone-gray and snow-ribboned,
its seashells sparse and small as grapes.