On a ship smooth as the decade, near the pine bunk beds,

my mother prepared for the captain’s

contest, making the costumes

from scarce materials:

she would be Red Riding Hood, with a cheesecloth cape

and high heels, Dad would be the wolf.

We’d been on board for over a week.

It seemed we’d never reach New York.

I thought of Brazil: black beaches and covered bins—

before the lifeboat drill, before

my brothers learned to swim—and now

the grown-ups sat for hours

in the slatted chairs, holding novels up against the sun,

against being nowhere in 1956 … and the ship

divided the air, black-white-black,

like a huge nun, her twin

pools winking knowledgeably

on the high decks . . .

The children stayed up late

for the contest. The ballroom floor’s gymnasium shine

kept everything, smeared slightly,

in its collective mind; and after those

with no imagination, the poor

in spirit, came

my parents: my mother’s Riding Hood cape

fluttering, my father’s crepe-

paper snout pushed back

above his eyes, and they were grinning, and I

was grinning, the world loved them,

and it was not complicated . . .

then

something else came to the balustrade—

I could see what they could not—a brightness

cast me in its joy and left me out:

the smiles of the captain’s guests

like glittering chains seen through portholes,

hooks and chains in the moonlight . . .