Provincetown Fourth

Here we are

in our doughboys and camos, our doughty frocks

with drips of bitter on the sleeve, our passions revving

their pulp to pittance at a gas station

                                 in the city that never peeps—   

                                 and here is the city

with its Martians in leather and excoriated thunderbolt-

boas, its Bible-trippers, its vintage bazookas for barter

not sale, its reluctance to be reluctant, its speed

for hire, into which we atrophy ourselves to briefly fit—   

                                 and we are never

so close to the joys of oil, the grease inside which a fat

becomes a fit, as we bellow magnanimously praise

on the least well of those who pass, ones who are dying

we salute: we are coming from the war, they are going   

to the war—