THINKING OF FRANCIS PONGE AND YOU ON A SATURDAY AFTERNOON — GERRY LaFEMINA

A man creates giant soap bubbles in the park.  He has a sudsy bucket, a wand of butcher string and bamboo rods, a way of waving his arms like a conjurer.  His bubbles are larger than basketballs, than some of the dogs that bark and pull at their leashes like my heart.  The bubbles float, sunlight shimmering in the spectrum along their flanks.

Soon he invites children to join him.  Smaller bubbles appear.  Some blow up in soft explosions of suds.  Others, little dirigibles, ascend nearer the tree branches and shimmy in the slight breeze. Delicate and short lived, they wobble, uncertain in their beauty.  I want to reach out and touch one the way I wish to trace a finger along your cheek.

I’d tell you right now how I love you but fear the moment bursting, fear getting my mouth washed out with soap.

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Gerry LaFemina is the author of a bunch of books, including 2013's Notes for the Novice Ventriloquist (prose poems, Mayapple Press) and Clamor (novel, Codorus Press).  In 2014 his new book of poems, Little Heretic, and a book of essays on poetry and prosody, Palpable Magic, will be released by Stephen F. Austin University Press.  He directs the Center for Creative Writing at Frostburg State University where he's an Associate Professor of English.