She’s 10, watching the thin girl’s wagging lips
chide her about her plump tum, but hearing
the bomb she’d love to shove between her hips,
turning Spaghetti Betty to burnt string
bits. Sweating more than the June day calls for,
she stifles tears, stuffs in the apple pie
in reverse revenge, slumps out the side door,
stumbles under misty Long Island sky,
forcing a vision of Blackfriar’s Bridge
she saw in a travel book at home, its
piers with stone carvings of freshwater birds
freeing her from these neighborhood browbeats,
unaware under Blackfriars this day
Calvi’s hanging body twists with wind’s sway.
Roger Armbrust
October 31, 2007
