Everybody’s Talkin’

Home-woven pancho and flaming red

hair: the woman staring back at me

through the windows of the moving

bus; and as it rickets down the

road, her scarlet hair follows me:

Imagine now that woman is me,

sitting in the middle of the bus,

eleven forty-two at noon, glaring

sunlight against the driver’s eyes,

and snickers from the youthless

avengers around me: through

refracted light, the straight white

lips go to the ear  and sing in praise

of the different, of the queer,

of the forsake and the distraught;

but the woman with velvet head

reaches into the deep pockets of her

pancho and turns her walkman up

one volume louder.

——————-

This is the 100 Songs Project, a 100-day writing challenge based on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs. Every day, I write a short poem, prose piece, or play based on, reacting to, rejecting, accepting, or doing something related to one of the songs in the top 100 list.

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