Red Reads Buk
I am a
mousy woman
with dyed
red hair.
The stop light
on Bird and 97th
has the left turn signal
and red stop signal
on
at the same time.
This morning
I almost died
at Bird and 97th.
If I had died,
I would have been late
to my first day
in a new job.
Is that something Buk
may have thought
while driving
his Volks
down Western?
And what about
those
pretty women
with real red hair -
and they can
prove it to you
for 50 mulas
with legs
up to there
not doing much
of anything
in the middle
of a perfectly
good afternoon
staring at moldy film
shades of blue
and green neon glow
from the
Pink Flamingo Motel
pool?
Waiting for Buk
to drop off some
poems by their
dirty feet.
And he did.
And I have
a dog from hell
to read
during
my
lunch break
thanks to
red hair.
Miss Morales
In 1972, my pony tail bopped,
my legs were long,
my face was catching up with my nose.
I bled a spigot every month.
While Sister Mary Margaret
was getting it on with Father O’Reily,
Miss Morales our seventh grade teacher
remained a senorita.
Father O’Reily wore turtle necks
when he was not dressed in priestly black.
His silver crucifix was in vogue.
He let the hair on one side of his head grow
to cover his balding crown.
In the rectory, Sister confessed her sins
to the merciless window of her room.
St. Peter and Paul’s cathedral
went through a renovation that fall.
A starving artist was ordained to paint
the namesakes of the church twelve feet tall.
Apostle envy?
Peter and Paul stood erect.
Massive hands made the sign of peace
to all that approached the alter
as if they were just two ordinary hippies.
We turned our backs to them as
wafers that kept our secrets on the tip of our tongue
melted into the morals taught to us by nuns.
Miss Morales taught math with one lazy eye.
Her dark glasses askew.
In a blue and white perspired uniformed room,
we’d pee in our pants when she would call out our name.
Dulce Menendez,
What is the answer to the equation?
After thirty years,
I still do not know the answer.
My pony has been cropped.
My nose is still too big;
And Miss Morales is still a virgin
if only in my fears.
Our Family’s Business
We lived in a hole in the wall when
I discovered hair growing in my armpits.
Our swollen front door faced traffic on Flagler Street.
Lily died in that hole of a wall we called home.
Her little green parakeet feathers
witnessed a rat run past the kitchen floor.
While having our cafe con leche,
Lily lay stiff on the bottom of her bird cage.
Mami consoled my sister and me from our
first experience with death.
This hole in the wall was also the place
where a cockroach crawled up my sweater
while I waited for my parents to stop arguing
so I could be walked three blocks to third grade.
The cockroach was startled to death
by my scream and a penny loafer.
As the crunch of death echoed through the room,
our new mailman doing the block that week
stumbled right into the hole.
Walked right in,
as if our hole in the wall
was just another office building
facing Flagler Street.
His embarrassment washed over his face.
Papi and mami stopped their squabble.
He stuttered to us in broken Spanish.
”Perdona. Perdona.”
Words he just learned on his new beat.
His new Espanol came in handy too.
My father almost killed him right there and then
for having walked into our family’s business.
