MiPo Poetry Board Best of 2002

The Song Of Rock Stars

“What a man,” my aunt says
as she shoves a glossy image into my lap.
“Listen to my Kris sing,” and I do
as he smiles up at me
like a father or a lost savior
dressed in beard and sandals.
At thirteen, my legs are white, cold;
I fill a chair my aunt has nailed down
in the middle of her kitchen floor.
Her studio. The linoleum cracks and fades.
I notice this and the smell of my hair
caught in an iron. My smell
on the back of her hand.

This is the summer
she will make me a red satin
number for the school play;
the summer I will lie and say yes,
my mother made it.
Between voices and demons, she took
the needle, thread -- thought of me.

Later, my aunt will disappear
after what my grandmother calls
the embarrassment of charging
my uncle with rape. “Imagine,”
my grandmother will say
and I do while everyone sits at the table
which covers the hole left by the chair.
A hole small enough for a girl
to fall through. And she does
to the boy who waits after the play,
kisses the side of her neck.
Removes a red strap without music or words,
just his hands resting on her back
in shape of a cross.

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