Remember that girl from Old Aunt Annie’s?
The one who used to sit with her back to the bar
and cut parentheses in the air with her hands
when she talked?
…………“I was planning
…………..( well, not really planning, just thinking about )
…………going to the shore for the weekend
…………..( or maybe not the whole weekend, just Sunday )”
…………………………..Little brunette with the lips, right?
…………………………..Yeah, what was her name?
Well, I heard she married a man from St. Croix
and when Hugo came, and tore off rooves and
snapped the palms and flamboyants in half,
they crawled out on the tin roof
across from the Holger Dansk Hotel
and danced in the rain,
no music, no clothes, no nothin’, just danced.
•••
Lynn Hoffman has been a merchant seaman, teacher, chef and cab driver, and has published two novels, The Bachelor’s Cat and bang BANG. His poetry has appeared in Angelic Dynamo, Melusine, Waterways, Abramelin, Referential, The Broad Street Review, Sephyrus and Short, Fast and Deadly. His main influences are Geoffrey Chaucer, William Blake, Billy Collins, Groucho Marx and Ogden Nash.
tongues of the ocean 