State of the Neighborhood
To protect and serve. This was a promise
we could count on before days of remote
CCTV cams and drones. In a lawless
land, this is de rigueur. But now, take note
of the stepped up presence of military
‘copters in our skies and the unsmiling
people who freeze at the arbitrary
need for the LAPD profiling
of our friends and neighbors. I never leave
the house without my wallet anymore,
in case this happens to me. I believe
it just might when I’m going to the store
or out for a stroll one lovely spring day.
What price freedom when trust is thrown away?
Month of Ma(r)y
May is for virgins;
a fact I deduced
after 31 afternoons spent
standing in penitent rows,
with bent heads
that slowed roasted
under a hot California sun,
while we recited the rosary
like the good little cultists
we were trained to be.
I wanted to be the girl
chosen to crown
the statue of Mary,
slightly weatherbeaten,
remote, and lovely
in her fake grotto
like the one
in Lourdes, France.
The nuns never picked me,
a girl with coke bottle glasses,
acne, and a pair of 36Cs
that strained the confines
of my sailor blouse.
May was for pretty girls
named Jenny, Danielle, and Erin,
long-haired waifs whose bounty
had begun to blossom;
not like the bumper crop
Nature afforded me.
May was never for girls
who read Lady Chatterley's Lover,
instead of doing her homework,
or whose family shared
dirty jokes at the dinner table.
Mary is for virgins who became
unhappy women blessed with
the same vacuous stare
as the statue they'd once adorned.
The nuns knew Mary
was never for me.
I never thanked them
for sparing me
the hollow legacy
of a pretty girl
locked inside herself,
screaming to be released.
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