SEPARATE
Meanwhile, the Vietnamese man in the red
driver cap who fries pork spring rolls from a
closet in Nugget Mall to be served at my
father’s f i s h hatchery s e c o n d wedding
reception is also my soccer coach & will one
day b e the man playing ping pong in the
driveway on my step-father’s table during the
only other dry day in April. All this one
hundred years after Soapy Smith put a man
down at the wharf with a gunshot to the groin,
we laugh, my brother & I mishear Johnny
Horton croon Russia’s own. Eighty years after
the Treadwell Mine caved-in shoreward from
where the Glory Hole’s wet pit of a mouth spat
up gold into the wheeling pans of sourdoughs.
Little San Francisco ghost artists hammer
driftwood into dinosaur skeletons on the single
sea level drive ending out the road making in-
effect an island of a town with one escalator
but half a dozen poured concrete corrugated-
roof echo chambers for outdoor play because it
is always raining & since our suits are already
wet I beg Jeannie to go inlet-swimming because
it is static daylight at 9pm & cloud cartridges
of rain unload only making the ocean seem
warmer.
__________________________
Sarah Aronson writes poetry from Missoula, MT where she will graduate with an MFA from the University of Montana this spring. Her work can be found in Cirque, Zymbol and the Portland Review.
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