AN AMERICAN THANKSGIVING IN FIJI

Texas tourist, sun drunk, kava numb, ‘Bula!’* weary, bored by barramundi, longing for a butterball, plops, ten gallon and Speedo, into an Alka-Seltzer Jacuzzi steam-scented with chlorine and coconut oil, while pinguid waiters, bead buskers and towel boys, straw skirts, orchid ears and palm husk pigment, encircle the bubbly, blue tile kettle like cargo cult cannibals giving thanks for a parboiled and time-beaten, big-mouth cowboy.

* Locally ubiquitous Fijian greeting.

TILT-A-WHIRL

(For Philip Larkin)

Evening fair, kids kissing
Red shell twirls like a top
Lips sticky, tongues swirling
Please, please don’t let it stop

Randy guy, caught staring
Girls sigh and spin away
Unfolding, rail holding
They don’t know what to say

God’s watching, says fuck it
Her labret shoots a star
Ouch, who knew? She’s Sapphic
Heaven’s a lipstick bar

I guess most men can’t hide
That they love girl-on-girl
Hey, the world’s just cockeyed
Yeah, like a Tilt-A-Whirl

DISTURBING THE HAIKU

Rothko’s mind blossoms
Autumn hues, suicide cries
Rectangles ablaze

~

Nude snowy children
Japanese pornography
Illegal tender

~

Hockney’s swimming pool
Semen strings surface like oil
Male model jackknifes

Sign Inside Le Trapeze

(A Sex Club in Manhattan)

Keep Torso
Covered Near
Buffet Table

Nick Ravo teaches writing at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. He is also a former reporter for The New York Times. His poetry has been published in or is forthcoming from Gargoyle, Lost and Found Quarterly, Burning Word, Covalence Magazine and the Foundling Review. He has an MFA from the University of California at Riverside and previously taught at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.

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