the Emergency Almanac text / art double issue...winter 2003 / summer 2004

David Scher

salt water daffy

salt water daffy

boards lap dip at the still sea unshaken
a mirror that strips, pries water loose
as ribbons sailing from their oak pins achin'

a long block of small houses with caboose
town people move faster when mistaken
slow to hate, slow to mate, quick to truce

the sky was a triangle of the three hues
today is saturday, right ? friday is taken
late hours passed in lamp light, the days fuse

peg legs canarsie under her four-foot bacon
the little raft is ,well, sawing a hole, a snooze
uncan that stout, my dried-fish thirst slakin'

write a pirate movie in real time, awaken
the forty pests, prettied up for their cruise
lock them out or in, balsa pinned, all-terrain
as we set sense to sail, swim ? we refuse.