They were all around, these arty lizards, and there was me with my Health Magazine, my 'Your Tooth Enamel and You.'







[fictive]

seeking smile
starry smile
starless smile

the labour day rain
the gushed quick Styx
flecks of ice cream wrapper
weeds of crud.

that eye-gouging sight!
his woman, her dress
are drenched.

she will always hiss a little when he smiles
at these moments of meeting
he navigates only by sonar
blind love's blindness.

bound south as night
piles high like a whistler nocturne:
dark. and her hissed laugh

sharp
from between the teeth of the starlit
smile that he can't see.

subsequently, at sea
something happened, yes...
i felt that satin relapse
of sigh into heave,
heave of the sea and whelm
of ropes, and wind,
and shanties spurted wet
from the dead lips of popped kelp

[or: of popped kelp pods].