Sun Sky Water
By Jordan Hartt
(Aruba) the emptiness of pool water, wind in the palms like a rough hand, she’s
underwater: no sound, no cameras (St. Tropez) she’s behind sunglasses — walks
the slippery long hull of the yacht; her wide-brimmed sun hat veiling a banshee,
she thinks (Maui) Tell them whatever you want, she tells her brother. I’m not. (Los
Angeles) she surfaces; her poolside brother trying to hand her his phone, You tell
them, he says; she dips back under (Milan) the emir’s eggy breath (Bora Bora)
she veils the sun with an outstretched hand. Listen, her brother says. Gisele
wouldn’t do this. (Monaco) hot yoga; she regrets the oily dressing, the margarita.
(St. Lucia) he shows her eighty-nine new voicemails at her pool — she erases
Them methodically, one at a time (Río) poolside, she eyes the clouds behind Jesus,
his stony hands outstretched not in welcome, she realizes, but veiled escape.
In Cannes, the director lauds the absent star: she surfaces at the Four Seasons
(Fiji) to watch on TMZ. He makes her sound so incredibly edgy but she scrapes her feet
against the side of the pool — how incredibly edgy, she thinks, were her feet to bleed.
Jordan Hartt’s work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Crab Creek Review and Prose Poem.
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