The dead whale’s bones wash to white
on the beachhead in Puerto Penasco.
We are full of chalupas, salsa verde,
and bad Mexican music.

Your lips taste of sea salt,
tart with the margaritas
we drank at the fish market bar.
I take a swallow, taste the lime,
drink you into my mouth.

The skeletal shadow sinks eastward
as twinned dolphins streak silver over the sea.
Sunset fingers through the carcass,
touches a tourist who stops
to snap a photo of his future.

Previously published in Ramshackle Review.

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JP Reese has fiction, poetry, and CNF published or forthcoming in many print and online journals. Reese edits poems for Connotation Press and THIS Literary Magazine, and her first chapbook, Final Notes, was published in February 2012. Read her published work at jpreesetoo.wordpress.com. JP’s “June, Texas, 1993”, “Ophelia” and “Happy Hour” are also in Reprint.

Object(s) to bring back to life: “My father (the original Mad Man) telling one of his hilarious shaggy dog stories.”