David Greenspan

Portrait of the ocean as a young artist

I’ve been translating the ocean
into thatched straw dolls.
This work isn’t so different
from translating the body,
the hair between my mouth
and nose, the space
between my ears packed
with gnats, the creep
of heart disease my family
seems so fond of. Yes,
I will turn all of this
into many straw dolls.
They will sit with each other,
hold hands, smile,
make polite conversation,
discreetly rub
each other’s thighs
while hundreds of seagulls
above black out
on lust. Oh ocean,
I think in a rest stop bathroom
on the Massachusetts border,
why do you take up so much
poetry? Who was your mother?
What color dress did she wear
to church on the days she went?
Why do you fill lungs so casually?
Is this something I can learn?
Will you teach me? I’ll pay
in straw dolls
made in your likeness,
hundreds of thousands of miles large,
bright as a cigarette and weak
in the knees, scared
only of plastic. Oh ocean,
you wonderful mess, I think
in a rest stop bathroom
covered in graffiti that reads
call the ocean for a good time,
the ocean was (never) here,
the ocean is a myth. Anyway,
it’s getting late and I need to get home
to my pages of your translations,
my piles of straw
heaped and smiling
large as a child. I walk
to my car and think
about rain, your sweet
second cousin once removed,
and how I used to meet her
on boardwalks, in rest stops
like this and oh, ocean,
look at that billboard,
a stupid, lonely picture
of a lemon as real
as the lemon I’m holding right now.

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David Greenspan is an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and serves as Promotions Editor for Slope Editions. His poems have appeared in places like BathHouse Journal, Laurel Review, New South, The Southeast Review, The Sonora Review and others.