Sun-On-Sea Poem by Mark Leci

I rise to tears outside the plastic windows.
They aren't for me.
I lost mine at Heathrow, where your bags spun round and round into the plughole.
I float through the town on perfect shoes,
Past broken bottles, rabid dogs, and natives
Who stare with their dark eyes and dark skin like I shouldn’t be here this early
In the dark light, surveying the war dead from the collapse
Of this outreach spoke of Disneyland.
I walk along the beach.
The morning sand is clammy and full of regret, (dregs of) a one-night-stand.
The sun rises over someone else’s hills, the picture-postcard fishing boats
Catch the tiger’s eye winking off the sea,
Making an unlikely romance edged with broken glass.
Alone watching the sunrise, a young girl sits on the Taverna steps and braids her hair,
Like black water in the slanting sunlight.

A man is asleep on a shop floor, and the old woman picks around him, sighing,
And brushing leaves away from his face along with the glass into the landlocked streets. The tut-tut of her voice is shifted sideways to the tap of a blind boy’s cane.
The shops peter out as I run, and the girl sits on the steps of the Taverna,
Braiding her hair as the black water sluices the street and the narrow road shimmers into infinity