Good Pizza and Bad Dreams
Steve Reilly
I walk a beach and spot whales floundering with sirens.
A big blue whale, smoking a Cuban like a cigar, says the siren combing the algae out of her hair,
humming to herself, has been his best lay since a nymph in White Rock.
With krill dripping from his lips, he pokes my ribs with his sweaty flipper and slobbers something
about handcuffs and a humpback in Jersey. My weak smile slips on the greasy scent of sunscreen.
Landing in Whiskey Creek, I chew belladonna under the moonlight.
The ocean cold bites me with shark teeth, and I wade alone, its remora. Crabs rise up from the bottom
and pinch my ass. They sink back down into the shadows of sand.
This time I wake for good.
I promise myself no more pizza with anchovies—and no more bantering and bickering with her over
most everything. It’s much too late to call. The hour yawns in my ears. While my stupidity snaps at my
feet, I sip an Alka-Seltzer, a double, straight up, and light a cigarette.
My cat cries for a night out.
A big blue whale, smoking a Cuban like a cigar, says the siren combing the algae out of her hair,
humming to herself, has been his best lay since a nymph in White Rock.
With krill dripping from his lips, he pokes my ribs with his sweaty flipper and slobbers something
about handcuffs and a humpback in Jersey. My weak smile slips on the greasy scent of sunscreen.
Landing in Whiskey Creek, I chew belladonna under the moonlight.
The ocean cold bites me with shark teeth, and I wade alone, its remora. Crabs rise up from the bottom
and pinch my ass. They sink back down into the shadows of sand.
This time I wake for good.
I promise myself no more pizza with anchovies—and no more bantering and bickering with her over
most everything. It’s much too late to call. The hour yawns in my ears. While my stupidity snaps at my
feet, I sip an Alka-Seltzer, a double, straight up, and light a cigarette.
My cat cries for a night out.
Steve Reilly retired in 2023 after working more than thirty years as a staff writer for the Englewood Sun, a daily Florida newspaper with circulation in south Sarasota County, Charlotte and DeSoto counties. His poems have appeared in Charon, Wraparound South, Albatross, Main Street Rag, Broad River Review, Cape Rock, Poetry South, and other publications. One of his poems appears in the anthology Florida in Poetry: A History of the Imagination, edited by Jane Anderson Jones and Maurice O’Sullivan (Pineapple Press, 1995).