"all the dopes he could drink"

(Sodom Laurel Album)

sip apple juice and icemelt
and icemelt and ice-
melt and icemelt and icemelt

sweet sweet sweet sweet tea
sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea
sweet sweet sweet sweet tea

peach Nehi over the Laurel falls, Cheerwine,
& the unnamed second best orange pop
ever after Narvik Mandarin Fanta

a tangerine kick
through undiagnosed veins
in black floaters

spelled your name
"Bonjour Tristesse"
when Jean Seberg's narration

moves from compromised
monochrome
present to a blue 'scope past

impressive even
on pan 'n' scan VHS
for its unblinking

existentialist noonday,
no thirst therefore
no beverages till cocktails

at the casino, no picnics
not even the Sirkean
consolation of objects

just the stairs to the beach
a foreground agreement,
a narrow recession,

an unplugged record player
that had earlier spun
Georges Auric's 1958 pre-Shankar

version of teenage ambient
the kind someone might remember
in a narration

who'd suppressed
(as I this Yoo-hoo coloured river)
everything else.