The King’s Hobby
As a prince, he played: the ponies, the piano.
He ran gauntlets, bred ferrets, penned sonnets.
Phoebes were his hobbies, and Hollies. Archery,
basketry, casuistry, daiquiris–before his reign,
the king wore out an abecedarium of fun.
But because a monarch must sit, aloof,
toasting the joust and praising the roast,
and gout doesn’t count as a hobby,
his majesty specialized, at last, in sighs:
a sigh as sharp as an arrow, a sigh as deep
as a creel, a stage sigh just like a tragedienne’s
when her lap is forsworn for a throne.
Off Season
A furnace sifts the arcade games
with dust--the plexiglass lids on PacMan
machines, the coin-pushers’ trays
in cheap vitrines; they wait on May,
on neon and strobes to transform
the silt they wear to glitter. Off season,
the workers winter inland: soda jerks
and sommeliers, lifeguards given back
to their pallor.
Only the chains stay
open. No one smells of coconut. Everyone
wears shoes. Ice cream comes
in a single flavor, demoted to a la mode.
Off-season, the sherbet-colored cottages
look preposterous. Every year, in one
the pipes burst. Every year, the pier converts
into an open-air hair supply
for wizards too green to grow beards.
The locals who stay walk dogs in sweaters
and think loneliness too urgent a word.
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and Ploughshares.
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