“ITALIAN TOURIST DIES AFTER TRAGIC FALL AT POPULAR SUNSET LOCATION PUNTA GALERA”

The absolving scent of salvia Rosmarinus—so ubiquitous,

why would anyone buy it packaged?—

fails to hide the cans and ripped up wrappers.

A red-gold scream debasing planet M,

authority provider for this sweet.

Aluminum, wearing the non-name Stark, (unrelated to iron tony)

endures, though crushed by one whose intestines

received the Mercadona beer with raw

ambivalent gratitude, this morning

or any time before.

Pobre picturesque Talamanca beach, contaminated

with drab E coli, manumitted by

a sewage system with a chocolate burn out.

Dismantled by an overdose of tourist

replete by E or coke or Special K

or socially accepted waste of alcoholic glut.

Medusa takes over the briny zone

Her predators on our plates at fancy Chiringuitos (which should be a contradictio in terminis)

Obscenely buried in crusts of sea salt, premature fossils caught in a concentrate of their former home.

The quests for budget fun or decadence equally

suffocate this madly tender islita, like

the mouth of a too small boy giving head

to a fist.

The green-and-love-hearted try to make amends; they’re

too few to erase the litter of the oblivious—and mostly

unreal.

Another Glassbottomboatsummer passes and makes room for

dropped temperatures and fall’s tempestuous gales

Whipping up the once crystalline sea, enraged and

Regurgitating, nauseous with humanity’s tokens of appreciation,

She throws up memories of clandestine boat parties by way of
Straws, sandfilled plastic Smirnoff bottles, rope and Ty-raps, really useful for securing

anything itinerant on a boat. Chairs. Dish racks. Hands.

One early spring day, construction workers renovating the immoderate mansion

Looking out over the waves crashing against the red cliffs that support it meekly,

Played a game with the spray foam insulation to see how far it would fly

they, living their little lives, have long forgotten, but She remembers.

Beholding the dirt yellow ochre worms drift next to her legitimate residents

Her anger builds until she, foaming at the mouth, now deposits them on the desolate beach

Where the perpetrators will never notice them. Gifts for the solitary stupid idealist

Wasting her free Sunday afternoon by cleaning up the beach that mindless polluters will enjoy next summer.

To me, the steep red galleon cliffs blow

soothing words of endless seniority as I join the after-afterparty crowd,

to behold Ibiza’s best Sunset! with an altered brain.

‘We will abide’, they reassure me, ‘when you are gone

Your detritus will fade as rapidly as you.

Now, we offer refuge and sometimes ensnare lambs,

to remind you and paint our sandstone rocks.’

Content, I nod and fall into their arms as a sacrifice,

christening the hull with my champagne blood.

The listed image is an original painting by Robin Wamsteker.