Miley Cyrus or Manatee?
By James Reidel
What is flat and nothing but skin,
What lolls in a shallow world,
What is watched for its surface,
Between long episodes of water the color of a dead screen’s
sea-green glass,
What has but a few hairs in the snapshot?
A bit of muzzle,
No more than a pug’s worth for a rented red kayak,
For this sailor swallowed by enormous wax lips,
What is gray and aporial,
Once mistaken for half girl,
Half monster,
Disappointingly naked and slipping under the hull.
—Lido Beach, Fla., November 2013
Source: Poetry (March 2016)