Three Girls, Bridgehampton by Laura Cresté

The girls become seals in their wetsuits
 
 in the ocean off of Peter’s Pond Lane
 
 
 where I’m paid to drive their mother’s car
 
 down the dirt path. The fields are purpling all over,
 
 
 there are ticks in the phlox and insect
 
 eggs like spit in the center of the bloom.
 
 
 Phoebe wants to wear her cashmere sweater
 
 to surf camp in the morning chill.
 
 
 But the sunscreen, I remind her, and Ainsley says
 
 Don’t, it cost like $300. Paige says Stop talking about money.
 
 
 What she means is, don’t talk about it
 
 in front of me; she’s careful like that.
 
 
 Remember Alice Notley says

To complain of money will ruin your conversation; if you do not
 
  Complain of money there is probably something wrong with your life.

At the neighbor’s vineyard grapes are plump in their rows,
 
 the rosé almost spent.
 
 
 There’s a teepee stark naked in the backyard.
 
 It looks wholesome as cornsilk
 
 
 but the fourteen-year-old tells me there are wild parties inside.
 
 People did lines of coke off a severed pig’s head in that teepee.
 
 
 Why.
 
 
 After a pig roast, Ainsley clarifies.
 
 
 The children are delivered to the sea. I turn to leave,
 
 then remember I need to pee, so I walk right into the ocean.

Laura Cresté is a writer from Rutherford, NJ. She holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU and a BA from Bennington College. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox, Powder Keg, Phantom, and Bodega. She is a book reviewer at Full Stop and blogs monthly at Ploughshares.