FLIRTATION,

WITH MOON JELLYfish

That golden gob in the sand.

“The moon’s ectoplasm,” you say,

“or wait—Neptune’s loogie.”

Our pleasure is like that, pelagic,

with no brain particularly, just a frilly

ruffle at the base and gemmed

light filling the globe.

I love the way you tease

the string of a kite with one hand

while palming my thigh with the other. Beyond us,

the hypnotized sea

is shifting its great heft

as the moon commands. I spiral

an orange with a sharp knife,

arrange the peel into an empty sphere.

“For your dining pleasure,” I say,

“a small sunset.”  That O housed within dimpled skin.

 Bright tiger burp

released from the surface of a rusted anchor we cut

loose long ago, abandoned

to the bottom, never buried.

published in Catamaran Literary Reader, Issue 26, 2019

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