MARIA TERRONE

MUZAK IN PARADISE

Guanacaste, Costa Rica

I would ban it.

Aren’t the palm trees enough,

            bird whistles

                   Pacific rustle,

pina coladas and mai tais

            during tropical-slow

                        Happy Hour(s)?

Pan pipes and flutes when streamed

            all day long over

lounges and spa tables

are not indigenous,

as even the geckos know,

            fleeing the speakers.

Above all,

            the mermaids beyond

                        the infinity pool

have complained of noise

            that interferes

                        with glee club practice.

Maria Terrone is the author of the poetry collections Eye to Eye (Bordighera Press), A Secret Room in Fall (McGovern Prize, Ashland Poetry Press), The Bodies We Were Loaned (The Word Works), and chapbook, American Gothic, Take 2. Her work, published in French and Farsi and nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, has appeared in magazines including Poetry and Ploughshares and in more than 25 anthologies. In 2015 she became poetry editor of the journal Italian Americana. Her first book of personal essays, At Home in the New World, is forthcoming in spring 2018.