Pushcart Nominee Eileen Malone

Eileen's poem originally appeared in our 12th issue. The poem was also selected as the first-place winner of Perigee's 2005 Poetry Contest.


     Her Ride

     Pierced, tattooed and tight
     in handkerchief top and low
     and I mean low, slung jeans
     slipping down her angst
     she gets her young body up
     from its squat before the stage
     to perform her puce streaked rage
     in patchouli, cedar poetry that
     has barely been skirted before
     paperless poetry, memorized
     or ad libbed as it goes

     her friends in the back of the room
     whoop and call back in chorus
     yeah, right on, fucking A
     she yells, screams scarlet, rocks
     back and forth, won't take it
     anymore, ever again
     fuck you, fuck all of you
     foot stomping, bellowing
     cheering, she bells, gyrates
     bumps and grinds, hollers
     about migrant farmworkers
     war mongers, pink, bald corporate
     see-eee-ohs, oh see the ee-ohs,
     the ass holes, for what they are

     she wants a rough sex affair
     with Ferlinghetti or McClure
     or someone equally old, beat
     doesn't care who knows it
     wants to be lustily mentored
     into famous poet status
     now, at the height of her beauty
     so she can then leave her old, old poet
     and run off with a younger
     upcoming, chapbook publisher
     to live in Greece or Sicily
     for a summer, drink cheap wine
     and write Pulitzer prize winning
     cryptic bilingual cantos

     the poem finished, spent
     she dismounts, heads for the door
     enters the scream of a siren
     as it passes, someone follows
     wait up, hey, slow down

     but there's a term paper to write
     and her ride has to be home
     before midnight.


(This poem is copyright protected, all rights reserved, and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of the author.)