Poet’s Showcase
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.