Inside her room where bodies spent
On a sweat-stained couch marking days
With voices raised and a window where love went.
How she wanted iambic pentameter
A drinking song to sing upon the Chesapeake.
Annapolis has moved on, so has she
From love so wrong toward money in these ports.

Annapolitan boats and clothing
Blue blazers or salmon shorts
Sailing toward their ego-alley mooring,
Becoming pedestrian up Main Street to her place.
Docking on hard wooden flooring
Adapting an easy embrace on nights
Without a crescent moon or iambic pentameter
In her room near the window where her ex went.

Annapolis men and ladies spent adrift
In the Bay’s shallows, limbo ledges to Hades.
Sipping Sauvignon Blanc, leaving half-drunk glasses
Of this unaged varietal next to empty beach chairs
On private piers and walking planks
In front of houses with long ascending stairs.

Mutiny moves her
Stealing bounty of breadfruit
Setting ship ablaze.
Her Pitcairn Island is not heaven
But shallows, ledges to Hades
Blowing stout midshipmen to hunchbacks
Dominating yacht club members with a titanic whip
A storm’s unrelenting slapping of a boat against slip.

Her turbulent wake of her escaping
Downstream of her solid body moving through shallows
One last mutiny for what her only love ignored.
No notice of her from the wealthy shoreline
No answer to the knocking on her door
At apartment number nine.

Categories: Poetry

Tags: Annapolis, annapolis shallows, annapolitan, el brookman annapolis poet, el brookman poet, elbrookman, poetry of el brookman