Damon Hubbs

Chappaquiddick 

Before we went to funerals we went to weddings.  
I remember yours because I got lost in the pool at The Flamingo 
and someone had to call Virgil to bail me out

the Red Sox had just traded Nomar 
and Eva Green still had the best tits in Europe.
We had flown off West to sing poems

Rob was there, and “the Kims,” the Boiler Room Girls 
whose skin glowed like the simmer dim of Edgartown. 
I had already crashed two cars that summer 

and my neighbor’s speedboat. Death by misadventure 
waited around every corner and it’s impossible to play 
both sides of the conflict 

when the ferry never reaches Chappaquiddick. 
I had some of that rocket fuel from the guy in Haverhill 
and your brother and I marched under the bright lights

with brigades of tiny Bolivian soldiers 
taking about lovers and lizards and Malcolm Lowry.
One cannot live without loving, he said. 

The Sox went 42-19 after the trade 
and won their first World Series in 86 years. 
We are the sum of the harms we’ve done to others 

and I watched you get away 
while I was singing in the stern  
to anyone who’d listen.