Miley Cyrus or Manatee?

What is flat and nothing but skin,
What lolls in a shallow world,
What is watched for its surface,
Between long episodes of water the color of a dead screen’s sea-green glass,
What has but a few hairs in the snapshot?
A bit of muzzle,
No more than a pug’s worth for a rented red kayak,
For this sailor swallowed by enormous wax lips,
What is gray and aporial,
Once mistaken for half girl,
Half monster,
Disappointingly naked and slipping under the hull.

— Lido Beach, Fla., November 2013

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