verse
Of The Heat Of The Day
Imagine if you saw it, two round hippopotamuses
Shuffling down your street, as funny as you please,
A father and a daughter trundling along in the
middle of the heat of the day.
Things that are large and fat do not walk,
Everyone knows that.
They trundle, as in the mother and the daughter at
The Boardwalk who shuffle from arcade to arcade
Seeking some kind of shade or
The correct stufft hippo, to replace the one
Who was beloved like a son but ripped.
I don't know why the sun
Has done what it has done to their pink shirts,
Faded them to a weird ungray. I don't know why the sun
Has done what it has done to this town.
But every year they come; With big families
And a headful of colored brochures they lay
And let mean rays scramble their flesh for an entire day, for days.
They hear that supposedly their skin chromosomes are fucked but they
Feel like they are in luck. They are tar-brown.
They feel nothing but warm.
This is a fun town but it is nobody's fun town.
On the boardwalk fathers and daughters must squint or be blinded.
One day a plane spelled Congratulations in the sky and left it at that
But not today. It is flat noon, and everyone has turned out:
This is the one time the whole neighborhood came outside, to see
The two hippos trundling down the street;
Everyone is helpless with laughter as they shuffle along, father
And daughter, white birds perched on shoulders, tar-brown
Skin molten with black flies. Mister Sun chuckling is raining warm on everyone.
A plane starts buzzing across the sky and
My hands on my knees I am laughing so hard I cannot speak.
Open up your tongue and taste the air, let the salt
Melt like malt on your wet. The hippos can't help
But crack a grin at their own sin; Gluttony, an eternity in the hole.
Everyone is rolling on the street. Let the sun come down
Like rain on your wet. They trundle pudgy and bereft. My love, my hands
On my knees I am laughing so hard I cannot speak.
The Approach
A dozen, a brace
Of salten gray gulls move in sheets
And folds across the sky,
Over lacey bodies-pink, brown,
Ripening and imperious in the sun
Under the yellow gun of an
American summerday.
Winged shadows flicking across sand & skin,
What a soily thing, this flirtation,
But oh what oh a sweet kiss the roughage holds
Wrapped up in dirty turquoise towels,
Peering underneath the frayed bottom edge
And dragging petal-shapes in the mealy ground
With a single toe.
.
I confess I am too glorious for you to be around.
There is a bean in my brain that drips
Strange oil into my blood. I wish now to grab you up
And carry your body into the waves; you are under the gun.
America is in prayerful love with its
Sun. Your body is cloaked and coated
With the shadows of seagulls
But I choke on it anyway, wind and all,
Salt and everything. It is so nice out, I just want
To lay on my back and laugh in a quiet way;
Bright white lotion through the air in arcs of praise. We've left years
Of skin mixed in this gray sand and will leave years more
But these-I laugh, I hack, I choke-these
Are the days we will remember long after
- James Chapin, Daytona Beach, Florida, USA