Cheap Laughter In The Affordable Sunlight Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I have found an affordable ghost town

(not in her eyes, as you might think)

But on the east coast south of the first home of
Conquistadors,

Where they have buried all the sepia nuns,
Whose bones have lain virgins for so long,
Awaiting the salt of Jesus on their root
Enjambment crypts:

Palm City is up for sale: Houses fat and immaculate
Going for $150,000 or less, homes for entire
Families and for kids skipping school,

Bright blistering yards all in rows like costume jewelry like
Where I grew up down the road from the wildlife estuary,
Cinders of dreams which once blazed north
Of Daytona Beach:

I imagine living there, the only house on the block
Not foreclosed, stepping out my door into the easy dimming
Lights of dusk,

Expecting to see beautiful housewives out jogging with
Their carriages, legs like glossy lips, like swimmers in the
Humid air,

Blown away like kisses given to relatives in fleeting departures,
The skylights all ablaze over those winsome ghosts,
A place for myself to tease my dogs, to vagabond from house
To house, and drool upon unfamiliar carpets,

Chasing a woman who doesn’t live there anymore,
For she cocooned into a fine last name, and had to migrate,
And now those houses glitter with for sale signs on

Each green lawn needing a hair cut, like dog tags on corpses
Who have yet to lose their glow,
A sight built suburbia who went up quicker than a boom town
For Mickey Mouse,

But there wasn’t enough bread to spread cheese for the clicks
To cut the mustard, but I have saved just enough to buy a fair
2,000 square foot crypt outright,

And live on a whistling block where the wind pirouettes
Blowing the tumbleweeds,
Where I can follow her for hours and never know where
She is,
And then lay out in the middle of that suburbia’s road

And wait famishing for days for the Pavlovian
Melodies of the ice-cream truck,

And for the sea to come in like effluvious retribution,
Filling in the shadows, and drowning the geometries where
There was once cheap laughter in the affordable sunlight.