Two Poems

Tahiti Treat Tastes like still life with seven fruit flavours. Tastes like resurrection mimosa. Tastes like pimple farm archipelago. Tastes like something invented on the Island of Samos, mostly found in the Southern United States and Ohio. Tastes like I haven’t seen a can in years and I’ve been pretty vigilant. Tastes like sleeping naked in a tent in the jungle, probably not alone. Tastes like equal parts Hawaiian Punch and venereal disease. Tastes like you might still find it at Hasty Market, or Shoppers’ World in Brampton across from the Transit of Venus. Tastes like noble savage, Otahete on a wooden Western tongue. Tastes like common flowers named for Frenchmen. Like red with bubbles. Like definitely not alone   Western Paradise Driving School Say yes every day. Say yes to durango, with brio. Say yes to panhandle. Say yes to sno-bliz at the mercado. Yes to drive-thru dacquiri and yes, yes, yes to Styrofoam. Yes to sharp-cut circles of hawk and slick slip of cottonmouth. Yes to stink of cucaracha. Say yes to the Dollar General. To his military discount. Say yes, I have prayed for our troops today. Say yes to road construction next six miles on the Eye-ten. Say yes as you pass roadside churches, roadside monuments to girls with short names: Amy, Joy. Say yes to owner-operator. Say yes in the warm glow of orange alert. Under the matrimonial oak. Over the rainbow, and on the Bible. Say yes to white cars and black cars and red cars and silver cars. Silver cars with pop-bottle bumpers and soybean seat fillers. Silver cars on Elysian Fields, silver cars over floodlines.