Melissa Ahart

DREAMING OF PORTUGAL

I would like to walk on the white sands
of the beaches of Portugal,
wearing a Panama hat, to be the effervescent O
caught between two Ps like the O in "pop"--
the joke flag bursting from a cartoon gun.
To live in the land of the letter P
under a penumbra, eating pistachio nuts.

Maybe the roofs of Portuguese houses
are stained the same dull red that lingers
in the eye like a forbidden glimpse
of an eclipse.

            To live like Pessoa,
concerned with sheep and erudition.
Maybe develop a head cold and languish
on a cliff and write sonnets to my husband.
Maybe get a husband. Learn Portuguese
for the sake of its rhymes. Walk through
the dusty streets looking for good fish
with the swagger of a minor poet
content with what’s locked away
in a dusty trunk in a rented room --
that is, her myriad names.

Date of Birth: October 17, 1979 Location: Brooklyn, New York Occupation: Web Associate for The Academy of American Poets and Poets Out Loud at Fordham University Email: mahart@poets.org Publications: Blue Moon Review, Conspire, Eleven Bulls, 2River View

- January 2003 - Dreaming of Portugal Four Ghazals String Lessons Five Ways to Love a Cockroach It Was Cold Fathers Man Found Dead in Bathtub ... Aristotle A Choice between Grief and Nothing At The Department of Motor Vehicles - The Best of Dorothy Doyle Mienko - Escaping the terrible fish The Great Gatsby Breaks My Heart Lisa A Poem to My Left Breast Spring Rain Suicide