Under the Sun

near the beach, by the dumpsters...

Old newspapers, one shoe,

cellophane, colours leached to beige.

Watch the bottle-dregs evaporate.

A dog noses

from one brittle packet

to another.

It's too hot for butterflies

only the tourists come out,

red as prawns, green as grass.

Bold beachcombers, men too,

celibate, shoulders hunched in rage.

Drink the bottle-dregs; salivate.

The smoke rises

and one crush-proof packet

joins another.

Reviews

[Casey Truax]

Life among the detritus. A well done portrait.

[Nomenklatura]

hmm... well dated, true, but only for the US, this 'dumpster' is on the Costa del Sol in Spain, and as such is a 'contenidor de basura', which, whilst quite poetic in its own right, doesn't quite scan. People smoke a lot in the fresh air, don't think Tobacco Smoke is up there with aircraft emissions or cows' farts as a greenhouse gas, let 'em smoke outside, I say.

[Roland Petrov]

A dated poem as no one smokes by the dumpsters anymore; it's illegal, right? It works as nostalgia, though.