Portugal

The Second Time You Visited Me in a Dream Were We in the Algarve?

/ Arambler / Leave a comment

We sit beside a pool
inside a villa’s iron gates. A foreign country—
which one? Do you
live here? I know

I don’t. Take my driver,
you say. I don’t want to
leave. I try to get
your attention. Why

is this box
full of water? Something sloshes
inside. But when I lift the lid
all I see is

a science pamphlet
written in English. I read
the words aloud to you
hoping for a humorous phrase

or double entendre too profound
for you to ignore. Karst. Sinkhole.

Biodiversity. Endangered
what? Tourism? Amnesia? Fantasy?

You look me directly in the eye, or
you see a greater
flamingo land on the stone wall
behind me. Whoever blinks first—

Pillory

/ Arambler / Leave a comment

“Lap and drag. Crag and gleam.
That continual work of wave
And tide, like a wet wind, blowing
The earth down to nothing.”
—Tracy K. Smith, from “Minister of Saudade” (in Duende)

When laws of motion become lairs,
it’s time to reconsider the quarry

and what it might hold. She stopped
buying bathing suits when she learned

the truth about limits. Love
lies at the bottom

of the bottomless. There she’ll be—
denying her need

for oxygen. Not a little death.
Not a death at all.

Saudade Scraps

/ Arambler / Leave a comment

The crumbs
she brushes off

the table will become
the place

she dreams
of reaching by train

before civil dawn. And
the rhythm

she feels
will overpower anything

any one
of us might hear.