THE FERRY
Inflated fare and snack
bar, dock a glorified
bus station of paler
crowds in ritzy shades and designer
addictions off to bake the day
away in umbrella lounges and easy, unwarranted
laughter. Everything is funny
to the privileged. Especially
privilege. One jokes,
You sure this ain’t the boat to Aruba?
Some have not ferried before. It smells
on us like soiled middle school pants—
a secret that could drop the needle
off the record of the world.
My window clears—smudged
canal posts, white twinkling
on hulls, wigs of grass
tossed back and a stretch of
bay that restores
sight, pulled to a frame
of blue on blue, one spinning from
the other like a motorcycle
ball at the circus, seagulls
scanning our pockets. The ferry
leaves foam in its wake, gas
in the bay, laughter of the tanned—
steam in my ears. Ahead is their place
away from the dross and crude
honesty of statistics, a grid
of quaint paths whose stones spit-
shine tourist feet. In the thick
of the bay, diesel drowns
clotted talk, inlet wind
the engine—
around the corner, an ocean
drowns out everything
but the truth.
ICON-O-PLASTIC
He came from a bouncy house on a street lined with bouncy
trees in a town that bounced from the map—tulips from
a magician’s pocket. Mom pulled a bouncy childhood
from her bunny hat, dad a bouncy scholarship from
an ace-stacked deck. It was desperate, you see,
but a bouncy new store decked with quizzical
objects had opened at a mall within a mall within
a mall and he went there one day and fell
in love with a white skirted subway grate, mutton-
chopped rocker and Campbell’s soup can lampshade.
He toed the store’s purple haze like a soldier, Jet
Shark playing chicken with a brooding rebel,
almost answered a half-naked alarm clock screaming Stella!
and velvet banana phone, asked is there anybody in there,
just nod if you can hear me, took the magical
mystery tour, front to back, ducked the raging
bull ceiling fan, horse-head/pillow combination,
fondled the crystal ship in-a-bottle, freewheelin’ down
aisles of blowin’ answers, Bonnie and Clyde money clips,
Nirvana coffee grinders and calendars of months with just
27 days: one for each year all the cool people decided
to live. I’ll take another little piece of Walmart now baby, he told
the shopkeeper and opened his thick, black wallet of freedom,
dialed his friends on the banana phone and said Come quick,
I’ve found myself at the Walt Whitman Mall.
WHY A CAR IS NOT A GUN
Sometimes the grill-flattened sky is
what it takes to pulverize ego, scatter
ashes through a land you never know,
cauterize the mind, speed your face
over stone, savor the crops of
sweat and patience.
Plaza corners, airport curbs,
hotel desk reunions made
possible by the slowing
of engines, cranking of
clutches, belts lifting to
every language of hello.
Babies drive mothers to neon
semi-circles of sliding glass; taxis
drive lovers to the show; corpses
drive families to stand quaking
in the wind, nodding at a hole
made by a bullet, fired from
a thing whose only story is kill.
THE FOLEY ARTIST FOLLOWED US HOME
Outside the multiplex, still plunged
in a Dolby daze, I did not note him—
on the amber slab of pavement, in
the back seat—my senses tight as
drums, my foot tonguing pedals, her
blouse caressing console, each sound
a tightrope strung from Theatre 10 to home,
where car doors whipped chunk and heels
clicked summer blacktop sheen, maples
flaring hello. Handle clacked, cat meowed, keys
sang across marble and black blazer snapped
over chair posts with a wave of rain. Blade
clunked into wood, apple, spigot, drip, scream
of torn towel—montage crisp, whipsmart.
Audience of curious mouths now groped
for popcorn behind windows, awaiting
precision. The day sucked shut, I rolled
my thankful credits, bare toes breaking
the filmic spell. Though I did see a shaggy boom
over our waiting bed, poised to broadcast
the flutter in my wife’s throat, my mouth
on her neck, the tick of baseboard heat and
beam piercing a silent screen, flooding
our ears with moonlight.
Matt Pasca’s poetry has appeared in over twenty journals, including Paterson Literary Review, Georgetown Review, Oberon, and Pedestal Magazine, and ten print anthologies. His first book, A Thousand Doors, was nominated for a Pushcart and his poem “Receiving Line” won the 2012 Great Neck Poetry Prize. After earning degrees from Cornell and Stony Brook Universities, Pasca signed on at Bay Shore High School, where he has been excavating literature and igniting creativity with students since 1997. A 2003 New York State Teacher of Excellence, Pasca also advises the award-winning literary-art magazine The Writers’ Block. Matt maintains a steady performance itinerary and speaks/runs workshops at colleges, conferences and continuing Ed. programs. www.mattpasca.com
Simply Brilliant. Bravo ! !
I dig!!! Good to see the Foley Artist again too!