We swirl dry martinis with a toothpick

and strike up a gentleman's game of billiards.

The barkeep aims his remote

at a sapphire bottle of gin over a barking T.V.

There, a white man with shoulder-length hair

clouts his pitch-black foe.

They’re draped on each other, heaving, stumbling.

Kept standing by ropes

as they dive inside, finding breath

for a flurry of new blows

before sagging again as the crowd froths.

I drop five straight balls at the opening.

Praise the liquor, then lose.

The fight has me.

Its ritual, its lethal stakes.

A Polaroid flashes in the corner.

A tan bride in yellow wraps her arms on the wet neck of her groom.

Far across the bay, in a wink of firelight, shadows

huddle about an ancestral feast remade as luau for the Americans.

A faraway conch blares once.

Then again.

And again.

A seraph wafts into the bar on a high, invisible wind.

Electric bells cascade in my farther inner ear.

I shut my eyes, let my head tilt to the left.

My Lord announced and attended

by ones in the world-between.

Seven months after death.

The high and low braided perfectly, even here,

by that familiar holy sound.