Tampa

By Jackie Braje

terrified at the YMCA
2003 in my blue suit at the edge
of the swimming pool blood
running into the water
down my leg and the kick inside

tanks on TV and no cable then
horrible leaf shadows swimming
in blue carpet in the duplex
fast bound bird in a window

kept the lovebugs in my cave
of hands the whole drive
home from summer camp
to keep the swarm inside

seven astronauts put under
soil on my birthday that year
and my small dripping heart
ice sculpture saturating
the party picnic table

made bets on greyhounds
at the racetracks wrote down
Luckee stood tall to see over the rail
sick dogs quick as bullets
through a bee hive and the buzz of it

always thought the green
mechanical spaceship atop
the 2001 Odyssey strip club
was sort of beautiful downtown
aglitter a necktie hanging
from an asteroid and dancing

almost dove headfirst from stage
in a forty-foot tank of dolphins
at Seaworld though I couldn’t swim
red rain boots running
toward the wild inside and a woman’s
hand snapping me back

---

Jackie Braje is a Brooklyn based poet, the Chief Operating Officer of the Poetry Society of New York, and the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Milk Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Statorec, the Oakland Review, the Minnesota Review, Brooklyn Poets, Ninth Letter, the Nottingham Review, the Westchester Review, and elsewhere. She also teaches composition and is an MFA candidate in poetry at Brooklyn College.