2018 Nevin Prize

 

 

i.

The average American’s surface struggle

lasts 20-60 seconds & goes unnoticed: 

to fatal effect. In lifeguard class,

we watch a little boy drown

two feet from the stand. We count the 

seconds – 20, nothing, 30, nothing, 50.

Nothing. We know how it ends

& keep praying anyway. His body

gets pulled out of the pool around 120.

Coach says. 

 

ii.

I see Pam for the first time

in Borat. She plays herself, but stupid. 

Someone says she got famous

from running down a beach in a red swimsuit,

& someone else laughs,

then Borat pulls a sack over her head.

I can’t help wondering

if she was in on the joke.

 

iii.

I catch a tuna two miles from the Pacific Palisades:

all muscle, undiluted Malibu blue & iron. Strong

as undertow. I watch it thrashing 

riptides through its heartbeat, gasping 

the way drowners do onscreen. I look away

so I don’t see it happen,

not like that will stop it happening,

but like in the movies

when you close your eyes before the jump-scare

& the tape just keeps on rolling.

 

iv.

Coach says on the first day of class.

& ladies, no dressing like Pamela. Actually,

Here we grin. It’s 2017

& high-cut swimsuits are back in fashion

with the advent of the movie

my best friend Sammy goes to see in theaters. 

God-dam, he says, shaking his blond head, those hot white girls –

that came out wrong. He laughs

& I say nothing.

 

v. 

There is nothing so clean as a mounted kill.

You can walk down a corridor of mackerel

& never smell the sea they came from,

place your hand between a tiger’s teeth

without feeling the sweat of its breath.

They always clean the blood off for the hero shot,

blot out the skin’s history of conquest.

 

vi. 

In bubblegum-pink, the front of a tabloid blares

Those shifting savannahs of skin

tan enough to fly a biplane over,

pockmarked with rain & hoof-thunder so wild

a wildebeest falls with a bullet in its chest.

When Pam was twelve, her father came home 

with a carcass slung across his back:

the first time she smelled blood,

she swore it off for the rest of her life.

 

vii.

Coach teaches us several different ways 

to break a victim’s grip. 

We practice sneaking up on each other 

in the pool: submersions, chokeholds.

We joke that we’re learning to

& keep scanning the surface. 

Drowning is only half 

as violent as the rescue.

 

viii. 

We, bone-weary, soaked in chlorine,

huddle by the pool on the last day of class

like damp stones. Too sore to stand.

Coach looks us in the eyes & says You are here

 

ix.

There are five stages of drowning

just like there are five stages of grief.

Except one ends in acceptance 

& one ends in death.

 

x.

We study strokes in the second week of class

& Ben’s had three in the last three months,

which makes him an expert on the subject.

He can’t stop correcting the textbook.

When he fails the same rescue a fourth time

& the girl in the next lane swims out to help,

Coach turns to her. Says Red 

We see Ben for the last time that night.

 

xi.

 

xii.

On the cover of People,

Pam Anderson opens a vegan restaurant

in the south of France. She is as blonde

as a champagne cocktail, shimmers like oil

gone to smoke in the Mediterranean sun.

She waves at the paparazzi someone paid 

to hang their Nikons off a balcony

smiles a hundred kilowatts at the bottles of peroxide 

leering from the soundstage –

they’ve all made it to heaven & this 

is what heaven looks like –

 

but I like to think it’s out in Malibu

running the longest beach 

with all the wind behind.