Bastille Day, 2018, on the beach at Nice

by Michael Galko

The stones equalize us all.

The grandmother in her hijab
trundles in with her boogie board­—

her robes bloom about her like skate wings.
Her escort (her son?) watches and smokes, bored with beauty.

Sculpted, the Algerian emerges,
a male Aphrodite from the spume,
in his tighty-whities.

Camus! Where are you these days?

He has the best balance, even if
his filmy undies are like expensive gossamer lingerie
from the boutiques a few blocks away.

They are like tracing paper, when damp with sea.
This is a realist film, Pontecorvo, this part.

As the sun sets, the ruffians of many nations
throw stones between the bathers
while their parents argue,
or ignore them, or,
laconically,

lob their own missiles into the surf and each other.

And the sun-bathing beauties— even they—
they enter the water with the painful rickety care
of seventeen-jointed storks
balancing
on         rubbery stilts.

Their wings flap about them awkwardly,
even as their enamel skin shines in the last light of day,
and disappears into the wine-dark sea of heroes,

though the water still has a tinge of azure,
like that one bikini.

The teen tokers dream of a wardrobe malfunction,
liberating, liberating, liberating….

The soldiers slowly walk the sea wall with their guns,
fingers poised over the trigger-guards, berets askew
over their crew cuts, taking in this strange precariously balanced
fraternity and sorority,

and I wonder what they see, these guardians, so far from their homes,

              on this strange toney island of the mind…