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Provincetown PostcardChristmas lights tattoo Commercial Street'shalf-closed facades--odd, how seaside life goes on in winter like the future of some high school friend you never thought of later, who by now has got two daughters and a second wife. The street's deserted, as if a villain and the sheriff were about to shoot it out, though nobody peers from behind these shutters except the endless pairs of sunglasses staring toward June. Eight o'clock. A church bell and one foghorn sing an aria so poignant I want to cry. The marina swizzles its lights into the harbor. It's Tuesday. I must be the last tourist in P-town. How paradoxical "home" is-- you must get sick of it to earn the right to have to stay in spite of that. I've never been able to take any place for granted like these year-rounders I see scratching their lottery tickets at the Governor Bradford. Where would they go with their winnings? How do we know where we belong? Already I've eavesdropped--twice--in one café, copping local gossip as if I might stay here long enough to make it pay. It's not as though I had no anchor elsewhere. No, in fact, they drop so readily it scares me. Am I some hysterical patient who sops up others' symptoms like so much gravy or just someone with too many epicenters, like the bar scene here in July? Neither comparison comforts me much. Sometimes I just want to be able to touch one place on the map like a lover's breast and say that's where my heart is. Which name would I shout in the middle of passion? Which town should I marry? Or is love arbitrary, like where we're born? The foghorn honks distractedly, a bored cabby, impatient for his fare but paid to wait, who can't complain about his fate of unknown destinations any more than I can. It got me here, at any rate. |
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Issue #9, May, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.