---

Maraschino

Marco says the pool boy quotes Cioran between laps
I’m stirring negronis with menace, an aperitif for the impending
apocalypse. Delphine keeps her sunglasses on through the eulogy
because she says fun is photographed better with a rainbow lens
The yacht is named Persephone, which feels on the nose
for a woman who spends her summers in Capri
and haunts a walk-in closet in Zurich the other six months
I dreamt I was Bernini’s Daphne, mid-bark
fingers already leafing before anyone could intervene

Everyone at this party has slept with a minor deity
or at least someone who modeled for one
Frank keeps uttering blasphemy like spit, a
Cologne where his ex-wife relocated
with that albino tennis pro with good forehand
I could tell you about longing
but it’s easier to tell you about the Shrimp Francese here,
stacked like a small pink Vesuvius on melting ice
Delphine says beauty is just fascism for the poor
whatever the hell it means
and orders another round of negroni

The sun sets the way for our Persephone
—expensively, and with direct eye contact
Someone’s dead marriage is doing the backstroke
in the shallow end of our camp, very at peace with itself
I want to be embalmed in this exact hour of sunset:
gold light, gin breath, a Vespa idling on the hills ahead
Marco says ars longa, vita brevis
and cannonballs into the deep end
missing, by inches, the shrimp.

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Sarp Sozdinler is a writer from Philadelphia and Amsterdam. His work has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Fractured Lit, Vestal Review, Milk Candy Review, and Trampset, among other journals. He serves as the editor of The Bulb Region.