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Poem Draft

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By Rusty Barnes
Revere at 92 Degrees

Cops swirl the rotary like feral cats or cock-
roaches while in the beachhouse bathroom

someone is fucking someone or having it out
with their violent bowels at 10:30 AM.

If I were a horse I’d be split-hoofed but sedate,
a little out of my field lathered with ocean

spume the dirt of a thousand filled diapers
abandoned to sand or caught in kelp

washed up from Nahant or the Back Bay
or fuck--the Azores? England?

On the road opposite the beach cops stop
a latino kid on a skateboard (I don’t know

why it takes three cars) and send him off
in a different direction. My kids are yank-

ing at my shorts so we hit the beach sand
and broken bottles with the occasional

needle or nip bottle. It’s a grand public
place America’s first public beach.

A horse cop trots along the beach but
the horse leaves a sodden dump in

front of kids who have nothing to
do but play with it while their dark-

skinned mothers scream in three different
tongues to stop. The horse doesn’t seem to care.

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