perfect

By Mickey Cesar

An eight-hundred dollar skirt

looks twice as rich

on a fifteen-year-old

Brazilian girl.

After summer

has deep-fried California,

and the permanent tourists

beachside have finally realized

that their faults caught up with them years ago,

old men consider their viewing habits

through dark glasses

rimmed with lime.

Twice as rich in kiwi

and coconut oil,

these Neopolitan delectables

and delicates

steam September coastlines far more

than recurring ocean currents;

and on rented porticoes

overlooking paving stones and drying grasses

in the shortening shadows of Santa Lucia,

old tomcats sun

smoking.

Caroline has left for the parking-lot.

Whiskers twitch in the wind,

and every piece of the puzzle,

dim behind the window-screen,

has long since

been fitted perfectly.