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Crown City
The type of beach town that I was raised to love
but knew was not for my kind of white privilege,
waxed wake boards like teak Chris-Craft runabouts,
oxford shirts and Vans.
A jacked up golf cart, chrome wheels, stereo,
four or five teenage boys, you know who,
tow headed, t-shirted,
bubbled wrapped in the kind of comfortable
that they assume they will always be,
eternals, lower gods at least of America,
actually not least, you can say a lot about America but not that.
Tan golden haired limbs waving to a hip hop beat,
screeching silly boys that still make me jealous -
though I leveled up with their parents I’ll never get
to be a teenage hero. Walked past thinking these thoughts,
when I heard a crash like a car accident,
plastic breaking, scraping concrete
and looking back over my shoulder saw the cart on its side,
still blasting the SoundCloud rapper,
the boys tangled in the roll cage like clout gold,
their mothers forced to spin summers
in beach cottages by Uncle Sam at flag point.
And did I think of them then as trapped, maybe
no more satisfied than me despite the glimmer? I did not,
I walked to lunch at an outdoor table down the street,
to the hollow plonk of a gold card got too late,
a tanned all-American high school,
ankle braceleted waitress I never got to date,
left that mess to their all-American dads,
to gather round in their permanent golf beer buzz and figure out.
I ate the overpriced sandwich I can afford now
looking steadily in the opposite direction,
thinking a hearty fuck all y’all,
and fuck me too
for still wanting in, tangled up sideways,
to have those kinds of scars,
the kind that guarantee a great remember when,
a cost-free laugh: ease made from ease taken.
Matt Thomas is a smallholder farmer and occasional community college teacher. His work has appeared recently in Galway Review and Bluepepper and is upcoming in Dunes Review.
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