It's just poetry, it won't bite

I am looking for a girl


07.24.17 Posted in today's words by

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.



3 Responses to “I am looking for a girl”

  1. […] 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/ […]

  2. H. Larew says:

    Good to read Mr. Marks’ work here and in The Wild Word’s current issue. HGL

  3. Cary Lynne says:

    Very nice. Loved “trailing eau de cologne like a song”

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