Two Poems

Kalahari

Sandusky, OH 44870

Not the desert, but
the indoor family resort:

six acres of ways to snack, spend, swim and dive,
laid out like Chutes and Ladders, and featuring
peacocks, a docile ocelot, and five
varieties of net and racket sport.

Some of us prefer the video games,
the backlit kiosks in the waiting room,
to the reverberant waterfalls of the ‘real thing’
for which we supposedly came. Both can make your ears ring.

•

Wave-tank waves are the mildest among
the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir
to; their exhilarated spume

is water liberated into air,
...