Riis Beach

is no longer shadowed by the abandoned tuberculosis hospital
which deterred conventional beachgoers and cloaked
the party for decades, no more tractor and backhoe dumping
surely-asbestos-filled brickfall in the background of crashing waves
and nutcrackersnutcrackersnutcrackers! or the one vendor, body
down and tiny yorkie in tow whose particular song, prerolls, acid,
shrooms to the moon! came true—tenth time they passed, topless,
pooch trailing, sniffing towels—and the moon had come out. I watch
someone walk a certain way, look a certain look and suddenly people
are lovers. Sarah plays disco and Sudan Archives and takes one hit
and thinks she’ll die, as a wisened queen shovels a slope in sand
for what feels like hours and we envy, once she’s lying, her home-
made earthen lounge. You swam so far I couldn’t make out your face,
sharks circling in my mind, and we did see dolphins that day, for real,
the whole beach gazing for one moment on the same two slick bodies.
The tide didn’t bring enough sand back in that year and the ruined
old pier was exposed in the water, jutting log pilings ready to end
a good beach day quick, and the city tore down the memorial
for Ms. Colombia. Among the sweaty droves we set up our blanket
overlapping with strangers, stepping over each other, knocking sand
into drinks and clocking new couples, scars, tattoos, those two chest
to chest to shield the joint from wind with cowboy hat. We saw
Indira Scott and Arewà Basit and Chella Man and my friend’s friend’s
ex-boyfriend whose podcast everyone listens to. I followed you
onto the jetty, but couldn’t keep up, something tearing between us,
waves menacing rocks at our feet, and remembered that hot mess
express on hands and knees barfing in the surf, back before the demo
began and they cordoned off the farthest stretch and opened the stand
with $7 watermelon juice and $8 hotdogs, or when I hadn’t been yet
and read about in my dorm room in an essay about top surgery
on Buzzfeed and knew it was something I needed. The bathhouse
hasn’t been a bathhouse this century and each year a new municipal
or ecological excuse gives the McMansions more space and narrows
the domain of the wasted and naked fuck-hungry queers, mounds
of NYPD horseshit on the boardwalk and helicopters low enough
to shoot us the bird, organizing on everyone’s lips. At 6 pm impassive
lifeguards whistle us out of the water but by the time the sky is pink
the guards are gone and people are swimming again, frolicking
with new freedom which has, I think, to do with risk, forget log pilings,
toxic storm runoff, nearby radiation off Dead Horse Bay, long bus ride
home, lovers lost, tide coming in.

American Flag Swimtrunks

Promised a gay beach by google I walk a mile down shore
ankles collapsing under me in sand joints getting suggestible
those little flocking shorebirds that titter in the surf, skittish
a stretch of beach just me and them and wreckage, an entire tree
root to crown, deciduous looking, prone before a ruined house
homes sliced in crossections, layer cakes, nearly every ground
level gutted, sand washing out, ground washed away, some homes
just fine, a sign painted on plywood TRESSPASSERS ASSUMED
ARMED, BEACH CLOSED! I kneel to pick up a shell but won’t
stick around, no telling when, basements dry though ravaged, life
happening upstairs dinner sounds and beers six golden retrievers
barking on a balcony I looked at everyone’s faces I tried to find
a mirror to ask directions to Eden I teased the edges of glances
for meaning I followed two guys on bikes, lovers or twins, after
I told my knees twice I’d turn back, stopped to look at big shells
piling up along the jetty, cyclers never pausing to plant a flag for me
walking south I smiled at someone who, walking north could see
the beached tree before me and I felt bad once I saw it for smiling
and I thought about this poem then so then the poem died.