Look at her!
that girl without her
face covered up, all open and
fresh, but as brown as a
dripping tea bag above
[chipped china].
Look at the dust in her eyes!
the eyes that swing tether balls
back and forth with cluttered
desperation. She has been crying and
those eyes are as red as Monopoly hotels and
[communist hearts].
Look at the sky!
and how the clouds are
cross-stitched into the wrapping paper blue
and then torn, torn, torn aside, just like
her dress.
[a summer flower print]
Look at that dress.
at how it is muddy with Coca-Cola.
look at how it wraps around her legs
(her curled up legs, smooth as
a gunslinger's draw).
[all this oily sin!]
Her prayers are strung out on the streets
like a Barrel-of-Monkeys arm in arm and
she raises her hands
to protect her cosmetics from being smudged by
stones pitched at her outside dust-sponged mosques.
[Why do you flinch at justice? at
shari'a stones?]
