august. Montauk. the 50s
tenement summers, oh-
remember the pretty italian girls
down by the beach, how the sun
would get tangled in their dark hair,
shining-diamond sprigs of water
lost beneath the fallen curls
the sand came burning by august
time, and they city threw out its heat
shadow, stretching the finger-length
spine of longisland. the girls, their
tough-talking boyfriends, all the
negative space of new york expanding
a singularity of season
here in the carnival heart of summer
he watched them come driving out
along the broken highways, the
host smell of their exhaust wrapping
stakes of presence outside his open
window.
he stood at the ocean side, where the
gulls wheeled their rusty circles and
the small princes of manhattan showed
their pale pale skin the to roaring furnace of sun