By Patrick Romero McCafferty
Over every coast a yellow parasail registers the weighty flit
of a stingray the size of Scotland cut like an air hockey puck
through the shallows. The quiet amplitude of its wings
over the swim of another season reaches lobbies, aquabars,
Huatulco, where, by couples out running a man in denim
loads the sargasso that gathers in the tide out of all awareness,
turns it into dykes in the sand in the not yet unbearable heat.
A pelican drops its shell at the sight of that littoral shadow –
the little shaking fist falling across the fold of an infinity pool.
Fourteen and nosing after what’s good, I’ve assumed the beach
if only to board its undular flight, past two miles of resort fronts;
the woman in a dozen sunhats that hourly combs the surf;
the jowl of a husband, knee of a wife, every pair of sunglasses
pinned by a wave’s toenail, being clawed back by an origin.
PATRICK ROMERO McCAFFERTY is a Mexican-Scottish poet. His work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Magma, Stand, Poetry Scotland, Gutter, and Good Press.
Art by Izzy Walter
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