It’s called Vacation in Your Head,
but first the teacher makes him visit
hers. “Give me a big thumbs-up
when you have figured where I am”
she sing-songs, and the boy knows
it will be mundane, someplace
pedestrian. “Oh! I feel sunshine
on my face, and water licking
at my feet.” The boy cannot believe
how long it takes his class to realize
they’re at the beach. “I hear seagulls!
I smell hotdogs grilling: yum!” And
since he has to wait, inside his head
the boy becomes a seagull—no,
a Steller’s Eagle—swooping,
shitting on the teacher’s cookout buns
and every kid that ever laughed
at his vocabulary. “That’s correct,”
the teacher says. “I’m at the beach!
Where would you go, if your body
had Big Feelings?” The eagle wheels
and shits especially on Braxton Griggs,
then wings to Maine, feathers lofting
like the pages of a dictionary. It’s nice
to be the biggest bird. He synchs his
breathing with the ocean’s waves.
From far away, a voice asks
“Where are you vacationing?”
“The beach,” a seagull cries, and then
another seagull cries “the beach,”
and all the seagulls cry “the beach!”
“The beach,” the boy says, opening
his eyes to brown Nebraska. But
in his head it’s snowing, hard.
Against the rules he pulls his hood up,
ducks and turns, so no one notices
his sharp resplendent beak.