Making Out with Bobby W.
in the Back Seat of Cheryl M.’s Volkswagen at Salisbury Beach 1965
It’s summer. He’s drunk
as a skunk & will fuck, or try to, anything
that moves. Or so they say, the clique
of girls I overhear talking in the locker room.
The ones at ease with their bodies.
The ones who manage to be smart & cute.
Who win the poetry prizes I covet
and the boys who become stars of the basketball team,
or Prom King, top of the world boys, voted
most likely to succeed,
as if that isn’t the most ironic award ever.
But I am 16 & ready
to kiss any whiffle-headed boy
who looks my way & that year not many do.
It’s a take-what-you-can-get
kind of day at the end of another
too short summer.
Cheryl, who would never call me a slut,
but might think it, leans on the front fender
and smokes.
At the fiftieth, the last, reunion, I learn
Bobby was the first in our class
to die in Vietnam.
Cheryl lives in a mobile home park
and doesn’t remember
that day at the beach
as if maybe
it never happened.
.
On Time
Right on schedule, breasts
sag, belly softens,
gravity sculpts contours
of jawline into jowls
of age.
When I type sag,
when I type age,
my computer, a machine
of planned obsolescence,
can only type sage.
So sage it is, right on time,
the body and mind sagging
into age, I feel myself
shape shifting, mind bending,
changing before my eyes
into the timeless:
Becoming Sophia, sagacious,
Greek goddess of wisdom
incarnate.
© Dotty LeMieux
Dotty LeMieux has published five chapbooks, the newest from Main Street Mainstreet Rag came out this spring, entitled Viruses, Guns and War. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Rise Up Review, Gyroscope, Shiela Na-Gig, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, and others. She is the former editor of The Turkey Buzzard Review, an eclectic journal published in northern California. Currently, she is attempting to write a poetic memoir.
The Loch Raven Review 