This is my ode to Kate and her year in Philad. Sigh.
*
*
Goodbye Roadmaster Scorcher, my
salvation from SEPTA, my
frustration fieldtripping to Firehouse.
Please,
don't
forget
our eleven months as
that stringy-haired, Freitag-toting,
Ray-Ban, lumbar jack-plaid-wearing
hipster fixes your once-functional ten gears,
reshapes the black seat which, for a time, I
daily molded and melded to make mine.
Would
you
recall
the curves of my ass if
we were fortunate enough to again find our
gears grinding together along the Schuylkill?
Born and bred of the same era,
could be my
fourth sister [if not for steely bones and
inflatable treaded sinew.]
Could be my
born-again
childhood friend [if not so confrontational, with
pings and dings and dents.]
An audacious vixen, you are.
Less audacious,
less vixenish,
yet pinged and dinged
and dented am I, too.
Here, learning the perfection
of scars:
drivers behind wheels of off-the-assembly-line Fords
honk and howl exasperated admiration as my helmeted self
minds the right-of-way in heels and a pencil skirt while
determinedly moving through jammed traffic from Osage to
Ayuda with a second-hand, chili-pepper-red tour de force
as my compass, map and guide.
As you shift and reshape,
teach new tricks to
the next import,
chase different boys
from
different bars, leaving red lipstick
stains on untouched lamp-posts and bike racks,
will you
forget
the curves
of my ass?
*
*
