Gardenia
What “studied girls” and “great art”?
The hallway prompts, enter
your human fifteen hour day.
A dreamed samosa slips. Gull tracks
and sand lack spike and fur.
On cloudy days, the sand travels
in the air instead of half-wet,
watered over with obsessions.
The dew rushing down the tensed
glass; sun glinting so hard on each
petal the scent on top pushes down
until your happiness plays terrible.
The world says and it says
by successive accident: a chain
of sailing boats in no way intended
to brush that long tongue of whiskey
out of your mouth. Or wished-for
Puerto Rico to smother you in
hot sand. Goodbye. Go to
the window shirtless, the pollen,
the gardenias coming together,
murmuring for you, outside.