By Michael Pontacoloni

We skitter about the hotel lobby,
high-ceilinged and dim and full

of surprising trees lime-bright in the wide fan
of so nice to see you again and yes let’s.

Strings of light over 7th Avenue. Fingertips
on my forearm. My first cigarette in a year.

After dinner a pair of dolphins splash in the bay.
Midnight at the marina we spirit a manatee

from a floating plastic bag, our eyes
break into the cabin of a motor yacht,

and I forget that it’s snowing a foot back home
in Hartford. Surely my girlfriend

has worn my sweatpants all weekend,
double-checked the door locks, boiled a pot of tea.

And surely Sunday morning she’ll take down
the plastic clock above the kitchen sink

to skip an hour ahead, surely find the palm cross
hidden behind it, dry little relic of prevention

kept anywhere I live, folds cracking and the newly
splintered edge sharp enough to split a fingertip,

which it will, minutes after I get home
and feel in the dark to prove it’s still there.

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Michael Pontacoloni’s poems appear in Southern Review, Cincinnati Review, Hopkins Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. He has received awards and support from the Sewanee Writers Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.