Two forklift drivers and their families
Splashed in the turgid waters of a Puerto Rican jungle tour.
They bonded over an ass-busting slide
Down well-rock rocks and scraped coccyxes
Their interaction, verbatim,
For not even a poet can make it up.

“I’m from Brooklyn. Where you from?”
“I’m from the Bronx. I drive a forklift.”
“Get outta here! I’m a forklift driver too!”

From the tide pools, the wife smeared in zinc
Rotund in her stripe one piece, shouts
“Manny! Come get your kid!”

“Be right there, Cheryl, sweetie. I’m talking.”
Remember to swallow the G
And somehow stress the unstressed syllable.
In a lilt so iconic, imposters are easily spotted.

“Now where was I? Oh, yah, forklifts.”
Don’t go to Philadelphian with it.
It needs to rattle like a passing subway car
And sell bagels, newspapers and heads of cabbages
From the back of panel vans.

“Hey, you know Vito Badacunni?”
“Yah! He’s married to my sister’s third cousin!”

With a Marlboro dipping from sun-burned lips
Beneath a sun hat with broken reeds and frayed brim
That screams second hand Soho summer,
She snaps her fingers
“Manny, come get your fucking kid.
I need a cigarette.”

Like a prima donna orca,
Called by the ring master’s click,
Manny exits his wading pool
Increasing in volume
But never in anger
“Be right there, Cheryl!”