As he eased into the sea, the island
didn't look as close as before.
He waded out until the chill climbed to his testicles,
then began to swim.
Joseph didn't like to put his face in the water,
like A.H. he did the side stroke.
The island was sliding away in a current.
Finally, panting, he drew within yards.
Then he was stepping among flung limbs, buttocks of every size
and shape, breasts that flowed and puddled
like melting deserts.
His father was wrong, it wasn't boring,
it was like a crazy dream.
From here the beach seemed impossibly far.
He found a narrow spot between two bodies that
smelled of salt. If he wasn't back soon
he guessed A.H. would come for him.
They'd side stroke in together, Joseph
in the lead of his father's body.
The people surrounding him seemed asleep, their size
joining the shush of the waves.
These walls of flesh made Joseph feel
as though he were again unborn, the fetus in his mother's
poems.
Later, when he reached for his shoulder trying
to brush off something prickly, he knew that he'd slept too.
That was stupid.
He was going to be sunburned.
Joseph slid into the water and swam steadily for sure,
but the heavy current hardened against him
until it wasn't water at all.
He felt helpless, a downed moth.
He could drown right then.
Then it wouldn't matter who he was,
dead people were all the same.
His body would wash ashore, polished smooth and impersonal
as plastic.
Politely, he cried out for help.
A huge Great Slavian, buoyant as a walrus
was swimming vigorously past, but his English
was a squawk, a meow.
His foot began to grow and he kicked the water
until he was gasping.
The one who came then wasn't A.H. as he expected,
side stroking and spitting, thin hair floating, it was Olivia.
She came to him naked in the water, crying his name,
reaching with arms and buoyant breasts.
She leaned to be an icon.
Brother to those saints in the museum at Musafirhana.
Super-duper, said the Zamenik.
He winked down at Joseph lacing banana fingers across his belly
and asked Joseph's father, "Would you write us a report?"
A.H. had come to sign some final papers.
Afterward, the officials shook his hand,
then Olivia's, and finally, without irony, Joseph's.
That made him feel suddenly older.
"We're having a party today", the Zamenik
remarked.
He pointed to a plate of crumbled pastries.
"It's for me!
The director", he winked, "has asked me to resign.
He's Kalemegdanian, and you know him.
I'm Zabljak.
We are historic enemies now".
Both men laughed without mirth.
"Would you support my immigration to America?"
Their last purchase in Great Slavia
was the soccer ball with the comet.
It didn't fit in the duffel bag.
Joseph wouldn't let them deflate it,
so he held it in his arms the whole way home on the plane.
At the customs desk in JFK, while one agent
inspected their Musafirhana prayer rug
and Zabljak carvings and Most Begova brass,
another held the ball close to his ear and shook it curiously.
That night, home in his own bed, Joseph was afraid to sleep.
If his foot swelled in America, he
thought he'd still be crippled in the morning.
His parents stood over him, asking,
what the matter was, promising that he was safe now.
Joseph thought about telling them and then he did.
Imagination, said Olivia, was Lord and ruler of us all.
The only way to save yourself was
to write the entire experience down.
[LAUGHTER]
But his father, as Joseph had known he would,
believed him, he too he said, had felt strange
in that strange country.
Now that they were home again, they would all
be physiologically perfect.
After they left holding hands, Joseph squeezed his soccer ball
and watched the window where the American moon was rising.
While they'd been gone, it had changed.
It looked dented like somebody kicked it.
Soon he heard his parents whispering and laughing.
They were happy to be home.
At last, Joseph could hear them laugh
and their soft voices sifted through walls
and rose up through his pillow.
At last, Joseph could hear them laugh and whisper.
Inside the soccer ball, still hard with the air of Great
Slavia, and there he thought, he'd keep them safe
and have them with him under the covers,
even after people and nations died.
Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]