Inside Out

Today I wore my skin inside-out.
I was big and pink
like an old Communist whose hopes
floated away in kremlins of smoke.

The others weren’t Communists.
They fought each other for crab legs.
Then they sat around the pool
and kicked the trapped sky with their feet.

The heavens rioted between their toes.
In the reluctant light, beer cans
glimmered and shone like broken stars.
Some of the others tried to talk to me.

But I was in Russia a long time ago,
standing at the fence and watching
the others perform the dance
of a late summer’s evening –

splash in the pool, plate of hot-dogs,
lighting of cigarettes, lifting of beers,
the futile kissing the magical
like trees whose tops pucker for the sky,

awaiting the sunset and the beginning
of the goat’s song in the nearby field.