Americans

JAMES ARTHUR

Your eyelashes: there’s
what I know about Anacapri.
And spelling out time in flashes, a lighthouse.
And the bright houses drowning
down by the sea. We swam. We drank.
We passed a bottle on the waves in the dark.

In Pompeii, that was buried by fire,
we ate smoke from a living tongue.
Your skin, your skin. A cinder tree’s shade;
a polyglot boy sold parasols,
and there were dogs alive and dead. A three-
legged mutt turning circles: no omen,
no omen we knew. In Assisi,

where broad and shallow steps crosscut
and veered from street to street,
we feared the holy orders. At Tivoli,
we leaned on a balustrade. At Frascati,
were cooled by a spigot.

Why does the tourist mind
always linger? It can’t do a lick of good. But
you are my eyes’ temple,
and I’ve adored you where you stood.


(From Brick 79, used by permission of the author)