Pula

 
Brass shadows try the arch
when customers are scarce. 
Fingertips, oolitic, fondle stubble, 
pluck off the glyphic dung 
of bats. The neon sign 
I never made glows tight, 
regret, a seahorse jailed in a fist, 
feeling the steeple of its back.

I see a young person feeding
a younger one. Neither knows 
how to swim, and the beach 
slides up, warm and deaf as crumbs. 
I was in this country briefly. 
Sundown laid its collonade
of decomissioned bus-stops.  
The tide rolls back like a drawer, 
and suddenly the stroll 
is full of wrinkled feet. 
Lions and martyrs have curled
to fit the faces of their coins. 
Grass creeps out in the stadium, 
and the moon rolls around 
in its bowl. Done with singing, 
the lizards rest their throats, 
bored as prostitutes.