Here's something you might be interested in.
I walked to school in wool plaid skirts
and navy knee highs,
through old ethnic neighborhoods
with clotheslines,
chain link fences, and aluminum
trash can lined alleys,
with paneled station wagons parked
on mud lawns
and mangy dogs gnawing
the butcher’s bones.
*
In red rubbers that no one else wore,
I hopped curbs and splashed
through asphalt puddle stew thick with yellow elm
and salmon maple leaves,
*
along streets canopied with aged trees
not yet nicked by disease
with gingerbread brick catalog houses hedged
with spruce and lilac,
*
through the crumbling projects past the lurking
Puerto Rican men with towels tossed
over round shoulders. In muscle shirts and patent leather loafers
they’d lean over glistening mustangs,
smile wide white smiles and with lilting Spanish
made me blush at my new breasts
bouncing beneath crisp cotton.
*
Shamed for reasons yet unknown, I’d round the corner
and glance up at the steeple
dormant until noon and duck my head
between the green bars
of a tall iron spear fence surrounding the school
play ground.
*
There, at Notre Dame De Perpetual Secure, Our Lady
of Perpetual Help, I stood alone
among the double Dutch ropes slapping the blacktop
and girls chanting,
"R-A-T-T-L-E-S-N-A-K-E SPELLS RATTLESNAKE,"
waiting in humiliation for the bell to ring.
I walked to school in wool plaid skirts
and navy knee highs,
through old ethnic neighborhoods
with clotheslines,
chain link fences, and aluminum
trash can lined alleys,
with paneled station wagons parked
on mud lawns
and mangy dogs gnawing
the butcher’s bones.
*
In red rubbers that no one else wore,
I hopped curbs and splashed
through asphalt puddle stew thick with yellow elm
and salmon maple leaves,
*
along streets canopied with aged trees
not yet nicked by disease
with gingerbread brick catalog houses hedged
with spruce and lilac,
*
through the crumbling projects past the lurking
Puerto Rican men with towels tossed
over round shoulders. In muscle shirts and patent leather loafers
they’d lean over glistening mustangs,
smile wide white smiles and with lilting Spanish
made me blush at my new breasts
bouncing beneath crisp cotton.
*
Shamed for reasons yet unknown, I’d round the corner
and glance up at the steeple
dormant until noon and duck my head
between the green bars
of a tall iron spear fence surrounding the school
play ground.
*
There, at Notre Dame De Perpetual Secure, Our Lady
of Perpetual Help, I stood alone
among the double Dutch ropes slapping the blacktop
and girls chanting,
"R-A-T-T-L-E-S-N-A-K-E SPELLS RATTLESNAKE,"
waiting in humiliation for the bell to ring.