Snoa in Curacao

Somewhere the jaded go
in search of authentic
experience — code
for poverty and bright beads.

I do not need the famed liquor
to convince me of essential

blueness.

Here, the first synagogue
in the Americas: yellow
in the Punda part of town.
Floors of sand as they had

in Spain and Portugal to muffle
the sounds of worship.

Patty Seyburn’s fourth collection of poems, “Perfecta,” is forthcoming from What Books Press in 2014. She is an associate professor at California State University, Long Beach.