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It's time to pierce my nose
go to a rave, try ecstasy
to keep the essence of youth
from slipping away
I thought time was a cosmetic
illusion, kept subtracting years
so long as the coverup covered
up, so long as the man opposite me
was too young to take life seriously
It's time for Botox but I can't make the leap
from dabbing on makeup to freezing
muscles, lines of experience
like lines of a poem I refuse
to erase
Every year I am further from Spring
Break madness, inevitable as the tide:
girls in bikinis which get tinier,
boys' suits get bigger but lower slung,
they toss footballs & drink American beer
grateful for advances in silicone
and that teenage girls don't heed
skin cancer warnings
baking in the sun like paprika-burnt
free-range chickens
Someone up in the sky got a pilot license
to fly a helicopter all day
IGUANA'S WET BIKINI CONTEST GIRLS DRINK FREE
I'm supposed to be married by now or divorced
or both, girls of that age my daughters
earning self-reflected credit for their beauty
& doling advice in preserving it
Instead I'm reading The Girl's Guide to Hunting &
Fishing, trying to conjure my youth with
as much success as Houdini had
in contacting his mother
I reel in a paunchy, coffee-bean coloured
My name is Reynaldo
extending a thick hand heavy with gold rings
You look so beautiful
eyes languidly taking in the areas my bathing
suit doesn't conceal
I have forgotten Spanish
& he has learned only pick-up English
I throw this one back,
lift my beach towel
raining hot sand,
grab a slopey big hat &
wander until I see a crowd forming,
following a Manatee who has drifted
too close to shore by mistake.
by Myna Wallin
from: Vulnerable Positions, ©2002
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