on my way to Tampa Bay

DFW 
and a lake house invitation
from an Oklahoma dude, 
via Rain Forest Adventures
Costa Rica 
zip line tour.

Oklahoma boys

breaking hearts with
expensive shorts
(not the hearts) but 
cornflower blue 
pecs 
like obscure logos 
on their way to Rome.

women 
moved stone 
to extract him from 
his mother’s arms, alive.

blindfolded and ear-plugged 
he writes the scene where he scatters 
his twin brother’s ashes on fire island. 
cuts the love line from his palm 
and prints his 
bloody hand on the page
like a fourth grade boast. 
tah-DAH!

the air goes out of the room. 
the pause. the dish:
Diane Sawyer tweezing
Barbara Walters’
nose hair,
digging gristle from her back tooth

among a pestilence of flies,
fried clams,
and a gang of manatees 
dragging the Hillsborough River