Ask Penelope, surrounded by that gaggle of suitors:

there are worse ways to spend a life

than waiting patiently for an epic to advance.

Saraghina, for example, sat on a wooden chair

that faced the ocean, and wondered

whether a great mythology could

ever collect against some unsuspecting

sail and blow an Odysseus by her beach.

And one day, a few young boys reached

Saraghina, but not by boat. They came

on foot from a nearby town, following the shoreline,

and wanted the rumba rubbed all over their eyes.

For coins, Saraghina would dance,

there being worse ways to spend a life, after all,

than waiting by an ocean for an epic to advance.

At one point, the young French boy fidgeting

next to you in the front seat

aims his plastic pistol at your temple.

The cowboy hat and toy spurs

signal an American West that’s gone wild

in his head, and then his lips explode: a sibilant

killing sound that denotes your death.

Unlike you, this boy is healthy,

chambered with youth,

blowing imagined curls of smoke off

the barrel’s Chinese-made tip.

His lungs are little pink cobras

of country air, while you cough (not

good at playing dead) and think:

I could use a trip to the country

or a good comb run through my hair.

It’s still your duty though to get this child

home, and so you drive faster, swerving

recklessly through Paris, your hands gripping

both sides of the steering wheel

as if they were wringing lapels, giving some

deadbeat a good scare.

*French slang for ‘trouble’