Pollo del Mar

Ornamental pavilions of rust
strung with skeleton lights
at the bottom of the ocean
only a few steps from where we
share a burnt bottle

The Roman empire built & destroyed
in a day & the whistling silence
out on the porch

the Merovingian kings & their Mexican beer

Mississippi weather on the west coast
brewed in a Polynesian swamp
with diminished returns
caught in the glare of fishscale chrome

as far as the eye can see

& dreaming it backwards so that
her fingers braid nasturtiums to the chain-
link fence as the sun rolls along the dull
watery edge of a horizon you’ve
visited perhaps one too many times