Travis Smith
I walk past the corner
where the man selling telescopes
yells at the microscope man,
scaring off the customers,
where the blonde-wigged girl
rakes it in with her crate
of plastic Easter eggs
marked MYSTERY, $2.50;
and I haven’t yet gotten used to
living in this city,
in my bungalow
where the mail still comes
for the previous tenant. Roderigo,
I leave your bills unpaid.
I read the letters
from your creditors and lovers.
Why did you leave here?
Why did I come?
The city with the only
black lighthouse in the world,
home to the largest known
sculpture of a tear-drop!
The capital of No
Explanation, the start
and end-point
of our drifting, where the kids
row out most nights
to get drunk on a junk-strewn
island they call Paradise.