lakeside entertainment

Vivek Sharma

Day after day I stand here
smoking the burnt-out horizons,
the mountains: tall,
distant from this gazebo— 
temple of the smoke
goddess sprouting like mushrooms,
like wildflowers, like everything
that can and cannot spring
from the peaty-lumpy earth
of today and tomorrow. Outside
in the lush summer grass a throng
of boys & girls are hooting away
the end of their high school days
but I’m inside an octagon
of desire—my third space
anchoring the about-to-snap tendrils
of my time in small and big
North American towns, while
the textbooks yawn a litany
of platitudes—a neutral ground,
a home away from home, an equalizer
for what cannot be equalized
or neutralized. Men and women
in shorts walk to and fro, dragging
their low interest rate happiness,
their soybean torsos covered in
ethical vegan fabrics, the ice cream
melting in the 36° heat, tongues
lolling out, while dogs with a net
worth greater than an annual income
of an average rickshaw puller
from a backward country of my
dark-brown people sniff
each other’s rear ends. Someone
throws a challenge and two boys
jump, they wrestle like walruses
in the cool grass. Soon one
is atop another and he’s thrusting
his delicate pelvis back & forth
and the girls are laughing, heads
thrown back, eyes watery with
delight at this gesture. Far
from the distance a host—
not of golden daffodils but
of golden swimsuits—are returning.
The seagulls from the Pacific
have arrived in this valley
after all. Someone sucks on
a vape pen and exhales: You know what,
I’m every man’s dream. But I am yet
to see that faceless face in my
dreamless nights and I am yet
to know how it feels when your
hand melts against those delicate
white buttocks. I stand here smoking
the remains of an eight-hour
shift, with numbers and dollar signs
floating in front of my eyes
from the cubby holes of capitalism.
The butt-tainer stands full, its head
covered in black, its body choking
with cigarettes. In my part
of the world people would have
regarded it as one of the many gods
and painted it with vermillion. The boy
wriggling like an earthworm musters
courage and gives a judo kick
to the other in his groin, which in turn
gathers more & more laughter
from the circle of bystanders
of lakeside entertainment. A voice
reaches to me from the horizon:
Look at that, my love! it says
and I look again at the two boys
groaning & giggling, clinging
& never leaving in a Whitmanian
sea-beach ritual while the mountains
stand solemn, watching.

Vivek Sharma was born in a small village in the foothills of the Himalayas and now resides in the unceded territory of the Syilx/Okanagan peoples. Author of Between Two Valleys, A Lake (Anthruster Press, 2025) Sharma’s work has been published in various Canadian magazines including Arc Poetry, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, and elsewhere.