Late Empire. Lisa Olstein

      BUILT FOR IT

      Maybe age or some other slow cooling

      of the limbs one day will will me

      from the water, from this desire to

      plunge my body in. I tried hot yoga once,

      once, winks the fireman on the park bench

      overlooking the sea. To be honest, he says,

      it felt like wearing full gear in a house fire.

      You should try Bikram, says the mother

      in workout clothes taking a sticker for her kid.

      Whose motives are ever pure? Let’s face it,

      tennis is mostly about the outfits even if

      it is what taught me how to go for the other

      girl’s jugular, that I should, even with her

      daddy watching. Want rings out in the house

      of the self and in the self the self must live.

      It’s Friday morning and I know what I’m doing

      here, but what’s everyone else’s excuse?

      There’s everything and nothing to want

      from the sea, the sea who does not answer.

      Complete refusal transforms itself

      into a kind of total acceptance, at least

      so it seems because one way or another

      our voices travel away from us and this is

      a relief. Code Red, the children scream

      every time they spy a crab. Dozens of men

      are killed, says the paper, and their wives

      are kept for single soldiers of the day’s conquering.

      Killed, we say, if a war zone. Kept, we say,

      if a woman. Love–love we say when the score is

      zero. Irrelevant, says the sea into which

      everything we throw away ends up, words.