Keith Tornheim has six books of poetry, Fireflies: Poems of Love and Family; I Am Lilith, Dancer on the Wind; Spoiled Fruit: Adam and Eve in Eden and Beyond; Spirit Boat: Poems of Crossing Over; Can You Say Kaddish for the Living?; The Sacrifice of Isaac. His poems have appeared in Ibbetson Street, The Somerville Times, Boston Literary Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review and Poetica.

Keith Tornheim

Bottlenose

We bottlenose dolphins
don’t hit the bottle.
Instead, we have developed group
recreational use of the pufferfish:
just an oh-so-careful squeeze
within our mouths to release
a small, nonlethal dose
of the hallucinogenic goody,
then pass the fish to our fellow.
When all have partaken,
we release him for a future hit,
then lie back in our watery couch
and stare for an hour or so
at our rhythmic rippled images
on the underside of waves.

— Keith Tornheim