Payday Loans (2 of 31)

Lifeguard, who are you watching in this train
awashed in bottles, cups, along the aisle?
Your shoulders search me with so bright a smile
that it goes down, through, like a good champagne.
These past months, year, treacherous tides, in vain
I have been waving for a versatile
Savior to hold me up in dull denial
of waters dragging me down like Hart Crane.
Save me (your sweatshirt boasts of your vocation)
from love’s inexorable throat, a coward
as I’m who wishes by this invocation
to float and flout the flux. Loose-limbed lifeguard,
what do you have to say? You’re on vacation
and this your stop? But there’s a huge reward!

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