Tina’s got bone yards.
Old scars,
from three kids,
mainly, Tommy
who ran away
and
ended up in AA out by
Green Bay, Wisconsin with
her mother and her mother’s
god
damned
cats.
Tina’s got a broke car.
Parked by the 7/11 where she told
the boss to go
“Fuck yourself up the ass with the slushy machine!”
and laughed
and laughed
and laughed
about it
till she cried for two days
in bed, re-runs of Friends playing
LOUD on her living room T.V.
But when she dreamed
those nights it was the taste of
warm light at sixteen
in
Hot.
Pants.
(pink and silver shimmering scale print)
in
back seats
with pot cloud kisses
f l o a t i n g
through
the
roof.
Tina walks home now.
The drug store’s out
of her pain pills so she
s
p
i
l
l
s
a can of diet coke
in the empty lot for
that sort of earthly revenge
and
crushes aluminum
in her manicured fist,
sits down on the curb
grinds her boot soles into gravel
and thinks
“If I could
Sing
I’d sing the blues.”