A single book, a pair of swimming trunks
still stiff from last year’s salt-spree, three or four
old ragged t-shirts blistered by the sun—
and off we go! Sardegna spreads her jewels
like brazen treasures with the clench and bloom
of seasonal fruit. Wrenched open now,
they pulsate. Wild rosemary stains your palms
with resin sticky from the seaside brush,
its slight green sprig an epithalamion.
The secretive dark channels of your soul
here find their tributaries—star-sequined,
moon-fed. The Mediterranean has crowned
her queen. Stand on this billion-year-old flint,
feet poised. Now disappear into her sapphire womb.
panoply, a literary zine 