Jeremy Nathan Marks’ most recent poem to appear here was “Fishes and loaves” (June 2017)
I am looking for a girl
By Jeremy Nathan Marks
‘Fare thee well gone away
There’s nothing left to say
‘cept to say adieu’ -The Pogues
-for ‘Nadine’
I am looking for a girl
whom Joyce Carol Oates contrived
for some lonely, half-crazed
son of poor white trash
back in nineteen sixties Detroit
She wears tennis shoes
tennis skirts
bangles and is a brunette
destined never to work a day
in her life
She can smell the fires wafting down
Jefferson Ave
moved by a siren’s breeze
she could wonder whether the lover she shot
is caught in the thick of those things
a far greater indifference wouldn’t claim
Her patron
the man who lets his children
do how they feel
be it hunting each other
busting jungle bunkers
or bearing ‘eyes as blue
as the water in the bay’
knows that this is the way
of free born children of the USA
I seek her up that same Jefferson Ave
past the habits and habitats
of belled wolves
and plaited deer
I am nearly certain that I see her
swinging down Woodward
coming out of Hudson’s
trailing eau de cologne
like a song
That is until I hear a rifle shot
from a sniper
that is actually a firecracker
while her smoking pistol
drops into her purse
The Guard, police
the Airborne
they storm off toward Clairmont.
[…] This poem appears in the July 24th, 2017 edition (today’s) of vox poetica. You can also read it here: http://voxpoetica.com/i-am-looking-for-a-girl/ […]
Good to read Mr. Marks’ work here and in The Wild Word’s current issue. HGL
Very nice. Loved “trailing eau de cologne like a song”