<i><b>Wicked Alice Poetry Journal
wicked alice| winter 2008



Maggie Ginestra


Golden Girls Remix

              [episode: Rose loses her husband’s horseshoe sales pension.  Sophia
                       joins a shopping club.]

God wants me to finish these sardines.
       Touch my leg.
God wants me to finish these sardines.
       Touch my leg.
My husband couldn’t walk by a horse.

Sometimes the horse would laugh.

That bag lady on 135th is me.
Why don’t we just set each other on fire?
       Touch my leg.

Why don’t we just set each other on fire?

My husband couldn’t walk by a horse
without asking
        Touch my leg?
without asking

“How about something in an Oxford?”

And then he’d laugh.
       Touch my leg.
And then I’d laugh.
       Touch my leg.
And then sometimes the horse would laugh.

My husband couldn’t walk by a horse.

God wants me to finish these sardines.
       Touch my leg!
I could grate cheese on your legs
by the time you were sixteen.

God wants me to finish these sardines.

That bag lady on 135th is me.
What does shaving above the knee
say?

How about something in an Oxford?
Why don’t we just set each other on fire?
Well, I hope it says

        Touch my leg?





Yellow Bug, Orange Corvette

Looked down at these crossed legs
and said,
Damn, those some good legs.
I said,

It’s been a while.
It’s been a while.

Picked up my new strapless bra,
held it up
to my dirty blue shirt
and said,

This town, this town, this town.

What do I need?
What do I need?
I’m a greedy girl,
I need things new and real and reeling.

Next door, next door,
so many cars,
each waxed and oiled and running.

Yellow bug, orange Corvette,
white pick-up truck.
They do a cake walk.
They do a cake walk.

Each of my toes
with its own arc, with its own arc.
Each toe,
I’ll follow each.






Most Popular

You ask,
Does she get her very own
front porch swing and bon-bon tin?

You’re always
playing the ass
for some extra cushion.

I’ll tell you.
She has her very own front porch swing
and bon-bon tin.

It seems ownership
is a look
and then a slow blink.

While we’re asking,
What would you do
with your own?

And how do you take your tea?
lemon? milk? honey?
What if I told you she took all three,

still tasting nothing
but her own dark throat?
There is nothing to say

I’m not lying.
A porch swing implies something
to hang it from.






The Stalactites under Mt. Soofreemio

In a dream I am slim again
in one of Henry Darger’s caves,

my breasts—skinned butters—
having slipped off and blown

home. I have loins of air
with fragile hair, just

a poof of banana gnats.
I’m beautiful as dirt

freshly shat by worms—
such a black

could be anything tweaked—
a green, a blue, a brown?

I’m indecipherable as
the two mirrors

who stare each other to dust.
Along the frayed underbelly

of earth, my bird-cries
gather in puddles.

My gummy gape, little
oval hunger,

wobbles ladderless
beneath the rocky teats.

I smell a strange lava—
melted spatula, wet dog—

and I run, not caring as
the caves change their colors.

I run, leaving a dead skin
trail of ash

and I dream I am a rabbit
but I’m not.

 

 


Maggie Ginestra has previously had poems published in Cairn and The Sow's Ear Poetry Review.