Prose Poem: Carol L. Berg

Cousins Island

The parking lot a crescent moon. Dirt road with craters big as your Volkswagen Beetle you've parked out on the jut facing the bridge where bare chested boys plunge into the green ocean's mouth. The Grateful Dead sing Sugar Magnolia from speakers. We grip Michelob beer bottles. Some of us are dancing. Some of us are dancing the lust dance. The grin and flirt. The two-step closer to that brown eyed boy whose freckles glow like orange headlights in the October sky. I'll swing my bare leg over your motorcycle seat, zoom off without a helmet, and burn my thigh on the hot carburetor. Later you and I sit in another car, smoking a joint through a rubber mask to get a bigger hit. I'll pretend to pass out. Or maybe I do pass out. And then you turn toward me. And then all the lights crash out.