Romance At An OPS Convention

Romance At An OPS Convention


by Harvey Goldner
Seattle, Washington

She came by train from the muddy little town
of Amnesia, Mississippi,
to the City of Brotherly Money, delicate
city of glass the colors of the rainbow,
for the centennial convention
of the Oceanic Poetry Society.

She sat beside me at the long white
table of temptation
in the crystal ballroom of the Cash Flow Hotel,
and we shared a big pink fish.

The final and featured poet of the evening,
wearing a white linen suit stolen from the estate
of the late god of a Baptist tribe,
read three selections through a combination
microphone and Geiger counter: Death
is a Snap, America Is the Lost
Continent of Atlantis, The Inevitable
Marriage of Russia and India.

After the reading we were drawn to mingle
with the people, yes, the people and the police.
She stood beside me on a sidewalk
at the busy intersection of Rhyme and Reason,
where the traffic lights are always green
in every direction, resulting
in frequently applauded, sharp, bloody noises.

She lay down beside me at midnight
on the terrace of the Black Mirror Motel,
which overlooks the Black Mirror River,
which flows down from the Black Mirror Mountains.
From the top of the bluff, we listened
to the babbling of the skull in the moon.

In her blue diamond dress
she looked like a springer spaniel,
but naked on the grass
she looked like God.