2 Swedish Girls on Vacation
By Frank J. Hopkins
We sat paired
awful dolls
near sighted and
tart tongued around
a spiraling fire.
We sat paired
motionless lest time
come catch us
tense and coiled lest
we give ourselves away.
Of the first pair
Whey faced and dull
needing a polish or
spit shine,
one said,
“…See, the sky has
turned cinnamon.”
The other, doe eyed
and rueful would
not look up
her words plummeting
from lips to earth,
“I see…I see.”
The host of this sepulchral
getaway
sat, hands thin as harp strings
ruminating over shadows
dancing in the spaces of
our fire.
Thin and gravid
too much neck and
too little spine…
Our host-a spinozist-
pulled from his coat
a flask and found the
courage of words,
“She swam ungently in
the Hollows,
ignoring the wolf calls,
ignoring the swell of staring
eyes, of lurid hands from shore.
She swam up and away
her body engulfed,
embraced and taken whole
by the warm fingers of the
Shallows.”
He stopped speaking,
placing top on flask and
lock back upon tongue.
We sat paired
window display and
ticker tape debris,
pulsing and clenching,
bookends to an uncomfortable
night.
——
Frank J. Hopkins is a poet/writer and essayist most recently published in the current issue of The Write Place At The Write Time. He currently lives in NYC.
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