Kelly #9 Poem by Robert Rorabeck

They make their lives up in rows
Of tumbling houses
Glitter transformingly under the sun,
And even so far away you might
Reach your hand out to try and touch
This skin, like the way a sexy fish
Swims in a brightly lit television.
All the houses rise up in silver spirals,
Collecting the light off the sea, turning windmills
On the ancient coasts of Spain,
The forgotten ancestry spread over her hills,
And in dimly lit bars where she reached out to
You and spread her fingers on your cheek,
Like spiders walk on water
Before breathing, the way her bee-stung
Lips parted trying to parse that she loved you
Between sips of beer.

All the way to her
Shores, where dead knights glitter
In the bosom of her bays and
Billboards read you can buy a home on her
For $139,000 and I know this =s a very
Good price for South Florida,
And by the end of the year my bank account
Will have enough that I won’t even need a
Mortgage, and can just lie out and love her,
And spread everything I own out to her
And the silver flash of her breath which moves
Like a speedboat against the break of the sea.

I drive with some kid across the
Intercoastal, and begin to search for her
Here in bed before I wake up I just
Saw her cross the street right next to my
Old high school before you turn into the
Housing development where my ex-lover’s
Parents used to live, but I cannot be sure,
Because they all hurried and packed up to
Begin the post-modern Diaspora. But I am
Sure it was her, Kelly #9, because I started
Loving her blonde locks in 4th grade, and hid in the bathroom
While her friends handed over my poorly thought-out
Gifts of love; but soon she was a bad
Girl, already taking advantage of that wicked beauty,
Forsaken the bobbles I spread out to her for a map
Towards me,
She took many lovers on back-country roads,
Bumping against her young men in the languid beds
Of American pick-up trucks. Beer in left hand
Cock in right, she moved far away from
Me. Finding her purpose in dead ends, she never returned
To school, yet my eyes still lingered down the alphabetized
Dirt roads of Loxahatchee; she lived down E Street,
Never minding all the sacrifices I left for her—

She lives here now, on this forgotten island off
The south coast of Florida, where she lays forever
Naked upon her small green front lawn, her tanned thighs
Sweaty on the tongues of her pink lawn chair,
Still dreaming of men she has yet to meet—

Me and the kid drive across the intercoastal
And the certain part of the day when the island
Materializes—I’ve looked her up on the internet,
Found her phone number and checked the maps.
She lives on Albatross Lane, so I go to her;
But soon I find that all these roads flow into
Each other like rivers or lovers, they drink each
Other, so the ways leading to her are devoured
By watery legs that sex in flashy ways under the sun,
So that this woman of my heart still defies me,
And I give up, buying a house somewhere close by,
Using up my bank account, I never forget her, and
Walk the flashing streets,
a bachelor struggling up the steep hills,
My eyes squinting in the spears of sunlight she
Calls down to blind me between sips of her
Salty liquors; Always, I can smell her near,
And always hunger for her, and she escapes me,
Playing with the lost sailors she calls up from the sea,

So even after I awake, I still search for her,
Waking from the bed, I smell her, and lick her
Salt off my palm, and I shower and prepare to
Walk outside to feed 100 horses.