When the Sun Sets Over the Downtown Graveyard
In the early dawn, they lie asleep
with restless eyes and dreams to keep
By afternoon, they have arisen
to cubicle desks: a corporate prison
Seeking escape and rattling bars
Sunburnt skin from driving in cars
and dreary hearts so lonely and sad
Television brains all broken and bad
They’re sugar-sweet and venom-blooded
Surpassing all the tears that flooded
They sigh in secret, fighting back:
what lovely dyed-hair heart attacks
with shorts too short and not a care
Eternal youth in the solar glare
Vampire teeth and nighttime graces
and lipsticked, sullen, moony faces
Who wish for tomorrow and lie in wait
(running out of societal hate)
for heaven at last when dusk is through-
a rowdy wild midnight crew:
Cotton candy girls and rollerskating boys
and skeletal static teenage noise.
Haute Couture at the Park
The National Anthem and trodden green grass
While sunshined and summered the young children pass
Amidst storytime colors and fried fast food booths
and playground-age amnesty and working class truths
Wearily in denim, in a striped top, she stands
Full-knowing that angels can’t hold human hands
It’s a watercolor sunset and the loneliness aches
A picturesque emptiness that your absence makes
A suburban fair, a Polaroid dream
Watching boyfriends and school bands and melting
ice cream
Sugar & grease & ruined family fun
Finger on the trigger to a summertime gun
Flavored ice and freedom and the red white and blue
Blonde skinny-jeaned boys that look just like you
When on parking lot pavement we soon choose to sit
Through office-paled skin the warm gravel bit
To see on-purpose glitter bombs rip through the sky
And sparkle down slowly with a conceited cry
For this the gathered people collectively sigh
On this Saturday night, this late Fourth of July
While each azure rocket explodes and dies
The same crystalline blue that graces your eyes
This is your lasting legacy, your warm weather hysteria
A Cincinnati beauty queen, the darling of America.
—Rachel Fitterman, Myrick Lane
