Tourist

It was still dark when the Zephyr arrived, so the crew weighed anchor until morning. A dozen sepoys met the clipper at the pier to tie her moorings and prepare the gangway. Waiting to disembark, Juliet watched them work from under her parasol. Lord Kent strode confidently from the ship and down the pier without acknowledging the sepoys, who had lined up after finishing. Their cottons were mottled with sweat and Juliet avoided their gaze.

Juliet had given a shilling to a young boy to show her around the port, but when the sun rose further in the sky she had to seek the shelter of the cottage. She lay on the bed and ate a mango as Lord Kent’s quill scratched against paper. The sea breeze blew in through the windows, teasing her hair.

Later they sat out on the verandah, looking over the palms at the sea. The sun fell off to the side and they heard the gulls and the lapping waves and the Zephyr bobbed in the distance.

“Beautiful, as I promised?” asked Lord Kent.

“Yes,” she replied, and turned away.

After a week the Zephyr departed. The same twelve sepoys cast off the lines, and the crew stowed them and were off. The sepoys held their salutes until the great mainsails bloomed, then walked wordlessly back to their village.

Cigarette Break

Moon
bright through the ghostly clouds,
and black puddle stain
on the frying pan cul-de-sac.
Far-off creak of the wind-slammed door,
stir of white paper
beneath the rocking chair fluttering
against cold porch concrete
cracks bare in the ancient yellow light.

The Jackal

I ascended the stairs, dark
with my heavy torch that sent
a circle of cold light skittering
off the stone walls,
and there in the gloom
the gleam of a slicked tooth:
the snarling red-eyed smile of the jackal.
The torch slipped to dance
back down those lonely stairs,
dragging away its beam
that shone like a crazy sun,
until I was alone in my room
with the beast
whose eyes still glowed, implausibly.

A Size Too Small

You're overflowing from that corset
like a bursting blemish.
Somehow you manage to walk,
mincing your legs inside a skirt
that struggles to contain them.
Didn't you glare at yourself in the mirror
before strutting off on your date?
I can find the basis of your error
on your gently rouged cheeks;
your earnest dimpled smile
and, above your flirting eyes,
your penciled brows,
are the clean lines
upon which your beauty rests,
teetering
like a crock
on the top
shelf.

To my Former Self

You look satisfied
to slouch against that dusty cutlass.
In your long sleeves
that drape over your hand and shroud the hilt,
you have the smell of sea-salt.
I see the smirk on your lips,
the ease of your lanky form,
and the thumb of your free hand
that digs under your belt, asking,

"What is it, old man? What
lectures do you have for me?
I have mastered the tireless sea,
and know its winds and
guide the helm where I will."

Hear me out! I too
knew the glory of a brisk wind
and a billowing sail,
yes, I! who am hobbled by my years
and inhabit the loose skin of an elder,
once skirted the new coasts.
When my luck was through,
I would have gone down
to the unknowable depths,
but I could only cling to the shattered mast.
Strange men found me,
when at last the sea gave me up,
and tended to my ruined body,
and for years
(I cannot tell you how many)
I wandered among the men and ghosts
of a wild land.

Now there is none of the thrill of discovery.
Day after day I watch the galleons dock,
laden with heavy boxes,
and you men seem intent on hauling off those boxes,
loading up new ones,
and call it a day's work.

I envy you, untested whelp;
long for your sprightly step
and moppish hair,
but you live in a perfumed dream.
Set down roots on the land
and remember your childhood home
if you wish to avoid my unpleasant fate.

the Benefit of Experience

I'd make a poor housemaid-
I always clamber over an unmade bed
and my knees force furrows into the sheet
and I start over.
But she flicks her perfect hands,
flapping the sheet into a billowing sail.
It blankets the bed in snowstorm crochet,
guided by some skill I cannot imagine.

Spin

I want to lie on the fibers of the paper earth
stretch my palms over the farmlands, spattered with blue puddles.
When I push my wrists through soil yielding like cake,
I think I've nudged the earth,
sped up that spinning orb,
and I hear the roar of far off oceans sloshing against the wales of the continents.
The trees, too, whisper with more force;
because the earth is gliding ever faster
carrying them under heavy clouds, through the air with breathless speed.

But I've let go now, risen
over wavering wheat stalks to admire the view.
And the tides girdle the earth
and sweep over it and slow it back with nary a sigh.

Figuring it out

My walk begins with a flame
that touches my cigarette through the humid air,
and lonesome footstepts, solemn in the night.
There is no muffled music lingering,
no pounding of a distant bass note,
only skittering gravel and shuffling gait.

How long have I been walking,
how long the sidewalk, flashing beneath my feet?
Once the cigarette lies dormant on the corner
I have no choice but to return
and already I see, harsh the lights of my apartment,
beckoning home-
For I have also seen the great, red-brick buildings of the campus
stern leviathans standing against softly-lit trees
and I am nothing compared to them.