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BOYWATCHING WITH LYDIA
Beckian Fritz Goldberg
Sharks, you think, looking out to the distance where they float
in their school, those boys in their wetsuits sitting on their boards
waiting. The boards drift in place like petals until the boys rise up
black, holding the center and ride into the curl before the white crest
wilts and falls. Meanwhile the lull is great. The cloud cover thickens.
Later in the beach parking lot they peel back into their white and brown
bodies, beautiful and sequential as time-lapse lilies, and that one,
freckled, shakes out his hair while they talk among themselves in their
easy, disposable language. And that one, waist deep in his shadow, goosebumped
as the breeze blows a kiss to each nipple. I watch them carefully now—flowers,
not fish, now that they're close enough to know I'm watching. And I
know how it looks. The long boards leaning like shields against the
dull blue truck and the towels like hours draped around their necks.
Waiting is everything. Just you wait and see.
You can read more poetry by Beckian Fritz Goldberg in
the premiere issue of Swink.
Beckian Fritz Goldberg is the author
of several volumes of poetry, most recently Never Be the Horse
(University of Akron Press, 1999). Her work has appeared in journals
including The American Poetry Review, Field, The Gettysburg
Review, Indiana Review, The Iowa Review and The
Massachusetts Review. She has been awarded the Theodore Roethke
Poetry Prize, The Gettysburg Review Annual Poetry Award, The University
of Akron Press Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize.
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