By Laura Gail Grohe
The boys on the corner
used to eat me with their eyes.
“Yo baby, what’s your name?”
“Hey mamma, wanna go for a ride?”
Then the war came to town
and swept the dirty boys away
in a wave of words:
“Buy a house with your war benefits,”
“Be a man, be a Marine.”
Today I walk by the corner
glad for bird songs
rather than cat calls.
And there’s a guilty part of me
because I know
the men of war
will show those boys
what it can feel like
to be a girl.
Published in Contemporary World Literature in January 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment
If you include links in your comment the whole comment will likely be deleted as spam. You have been warned! Otherwise, dialoguing with these poems is encouraged.