INTERVIEWS
You choose a foot, a head and a vertebra
(you think) sunblasted skin-smooth,
tugged from seawall rising above island
beach like an ambitious art installation:
wall of contemporary junk fused
by the sea in all her panoramic
moods, ferried by swell, squalls
here, where you and I are the last
two on earth. Naked but for hiking
boots and sunglasses we excavate
black bottles and flip-flops, life
vests, surfboards halved, whole anchors,
one car´s fender of rust, even a rubber
duck trapped in a mold packed
by deft, transparent fingers and al-
though nothing is unfamiliar
we are shocked to find it here, like War-
hol shocks us into viewing the mundane
as a personal flaw–mine, yours. Boy-
romantic, you choose the organic: pig
skull, atrophied bird´s foot, mystery
vertebra weighed in your hands–bright,
appalling fragment. Dusk mottles
the shallows and the first shark fin
of the evening glides by three feet
from my boots. Land, you shout,
pointing to California–a spine brown
as the air blurring scarred peaks. A-
round us, life clings to rocks–limpets,
glossed mussels, seals. Pelicans stab
the swell. Gull wings flare above pitted cliffs.
There is no escaping it, you say, fit-
ting skull, foot and vertebra into
your khaki sack–a perfect
fit.

I can´t take my eyes off the sharks.









PB Rippey´s poetry and fiction have appeared in journals such as Zyzzyva, Runes, Pool, Slope, Solo, Mary, and Phoebe. She is the recipient of the Abroad Writers´ Conferences 2007 Poetry Fellowship. Her chapbook, Nightmares With Moons, was published by Pudding House in Fall 2006. She is completing a full-length collection of poetry and a novel. She lives in North Hollywood, CA.
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