Rummy Park, 24
(Limbo)

by Rebecca Lu Kiernan

To the August storm of love
Crashing the emerald Gulf of Mexico
Against the grey razor of stone,
Blurring the golden bridge
With sea foam,
Flooding out silver starlings
From labyrinthic coral coves,
Scattering dog-faced, red-eyed bats
To points west,
Sodium light dimming
Against the tremulous breast
Of red sky against island clouds
The blue-black of a bruise.

Dangerous, this trysting point,
Honeysuckle evening,
Sugar white bed of sand
And in the leap of waves
Somewhere,
The hand that fits my hand
Waiting to take me down
To ruined genius nations
Beneath this tourist town.

Tentatively I survive
One poem at a time,
Stumbling ghost
Unable to cross,
Though once I kissed the face of God.