Hydra

Gartenfieber I - Gardenfever I 100 x 80 cm acryl on canvas by Karin Goeppert

HYDRA

It would seem there’s nothing

better to do in Iowa than to turn

a prize-winning hog into a heap

of barbecue on paper plate,

potato salad hugging

its oily flank, or turning a

sonnet sequence into tenure,

or your wife into my special friend,

sifting through

the fragments, making things up as we go along.

Remember what 4-H stands for?

Neither do I.

No hogs on this Saronic Island.

Just scores of donkeys more or

less inedible but essential—

no cars, just a garbage truck—

for hauling stuff and tourists around.

The hairy waiter’s face is lit up

with a yellow-toothed leer—mother-

fucker also seems to like your wife—as he

smuggles on-the-house ouzo to your table

and you, hammered, nothing but fragments

no one’s bothering to sift through.

This isn’t Iowa, Mary. The island’s harbor

town curling up into the burning blue

nutmeg-cinnamon-cumin odor

redolent of sex on a warm afternoon

in summer. Your mind, finally catching

up with your body, begins to loosen up.

Suspicions fade away. Your dreams

are in technicolor. Back from a swim

you are just in time for lunch—

she’s making tomato salad with those big chunks

of feta cheese and those fat Kalamata olives

you love so much, whose praise you sing endlessly,

and she’s poured you a glass of

crisp retsina—lunch on a hot Greek island 

just the two of you watching the play of light

on flowers and white washed stone buildings

is not only better than most dreams

it might even be one.