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The Missouri Review

Poem of the Week | June 26, 2017

David Russomano: “On Pompano Beach”

This week, we are excited to present a new poem by David Russomano. Russomano attended Kingston University, where he was awarded the 2014 Faber & Faber Creative Writing MA Prize. In addition to being nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Sundress Publications’ 2012 Best of the Net Anthology, his work has appeared in print and digital publications like Pioneertown, Phantom Drift, and The Impressment Gang (forthcoming). His debut chapbook, (Reasons for) Moving, is forthcoming from Structo. To learn more, visit www.davidrussomano.wordpress.com.

Author’s note:

I have email accounts with two different providers, and whenever I sign out of either, I’m presented with what some people would have you believe is news. In reality, the “features” that occupy these dubious positions are usually all shock and no substance. They are designed to get your attention as cheap marketing ploys, not because they have anything genuinely important to say. Still, these stranger-than-fiction tales occasionally merit a little more attention, and the story of the giant eye that washed up in Florida a few years back was one such case. It’s hard to say exactly why, but it caught my interest. I felt the need to keep coming back to it. There was something there. I liked the mystery, and when “experts” explained it away, I found myself wishing they hadn’t. Some questions are better left unanswered; some seas are better left uncrossed.

 

On Pompano Beach

 

If the ocean came in pieces,
could be broken up
into its constituents,
the proverbial bricks and mortar,
if one bit of this
dynamic masonry could be isolated,
what shape would the sea’s
simplest component take?

 

On 10/10/2012, the Atlantic
divulged something spherical:
a colossal marble or the gelatinous dot
of a living question mark.
I would nominate this
enormous blue orb
of uncertain origin,
freshly decontextualized,

 

but a baffled beachcomber
put it on ice, deferring
to expert opinion: bloody eye
wrenched from a swordfish.
The sea still comes across
as infinite and defiant,
but this mundane verdict takes
something small away from it.

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