Honeymoon
--by James Tate

We were making love in a speedboat
firing a real cannonball over the lake.
We really should have been communing
with Ibsen's ghost, announced by an
excellent Hungarian waiter and drinking
straight tequila in the Ozarks.
It should have been the time of our lives
in Helsinki, I wanted to make it all worth while.
Perhaps an Irish setter by the fireplace
thrown in to prove I am at peace with you
anywhere. Our favorite song came on
the radio as we hung on to the last
noodle of consciousness. Instead,
found ourselves bouncing checks and
terrified by the bridges, without food
or rest, or gas for that matter. We should
have been rushing for cocktails smack
into the Berlin Wall, instead of ourselves.