TRUE

I have answers in my front pocket
sneak a look at Ellen's uncovered

solutions, 7, 9, 11, blackened
true. A white silence and

I can't remember. I read a paragraph
about imports exports wholesale

retail exports retail export and
wholesale imports and am asked

the theme. The mind vacuums
a freckled shoulder and a couple

of beauty marks. The teacher moves
from desk to chair, oblivious to doubt.

Needles of fluorescence, and I'm in the spot
light, so, give up on a fumble to the pocket

and gamble a straight line of false,
then crisscross, true false true,

bet false for 19 and 20. Two weeks
later Mrs. Shapiro asks if English

is spoken at home. I answer false.

Santa Barbara Review, Vol. 6 No.1

LONG BEACH AQUARIUM

A blown up bass tunnels toward Sam
mimes something about the art
of swiveling, appears to invite him

for a swim, but Sam runs in his own pool
of impulses, zigzags up a corridor to
slithers of silver, knifing through a smaller

tank in schools, around and around,
not too different than the mobs of Fifth Ave.
with fashion pinching their skins. They

are called anchovies, I hear one mother
emphasize, as if a word is equal to a swirl
of spines. Fish from the sea of Cortez.

and the Bering Strait shine in multiple paisleys
and stripes, every which way. Sam shrieks
among the sharpest blues and yellow tails

with eyes set in the abstract pattern
that gather by a coral reef. A flatish fish,
a wrasse in lightest green gray polish

glides across. I'd like a shirt that tone
and a sweater like that woven eel thing
that entwines with sand. A worker

in black rubber and fins, bubbling under water,
waves. I tell Sam we came from a larger tank
and he almost stills for a flash as jellyfish

parachute into the frame.

Solo, No.6

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