Basically Two Good Boys |
She must have been too beautiful to bear
blue eyed & brown hair to nape of neck
If they ran their fingers through the clutch
of hair there they may have felt moist wet
wonder & how childlike this girl was
at 16 lips parted for breath eyes glassy
from Chi-Chi’s and Fuzzy Navels eyes
shiny & shallow & sure to have that come
hither stare. Once my mom read a poem
I’d written about date rape. Weeks
after her visit I looked through
my journal, saw her pencilled remarks
“It was just like this. He was a marine.
He gave me a rose afterwards.” Yes,
and these two boys, their young legs
wiggling like greyhounds, I imagine
them watching her, their tongues wagging,
the gleam from their wallet chains giving
her eyes too much of a twinkle.
On NPR this morning, the father of
one boy said, “These are basically
two good boys who got themselves
into a terrible stupid situation.”
And the girl, the girl.
copyright 2005
Kirsten
Ogden |