Judson Evans

Fuochi di San Giovanni

Connectivity of the crowd sways and surges at hips
and shoulders cooler or warmer currents–the smears
and smells of the way the whole scorching
day itself takes wine, oil and garlic and long glossy black
underarm hair escaping tank tops, herbs and varied colognes
and deodorants and re-odorants to sweat itself out, to lubricate the grind
of other people, mostly adolescent Italian boys climbing the renaissance architectural structures at the edge of the bridge, hiking up the wall and clinging
to columns….full-arm’s length at gaff-headed
angles. All the while the crowd opens by the touch
technology of beach head, buried anchors, flippant outflow language, songs
and chants, threading the things dragged through the human sea gates – a bicycle, a
    drunk
girlfriend, a dog, a wheelchair – each provoking a gasp, a choral complaint –
then a cocooning, gestating tunnel of retracting butts and backs and breasts:

fireworks spark
and explode in his hand –
child with an iphone