For a minute, times was hard and I moved back into my parent's house. I was working a world away - at this restaurant in Edina, very ritzy part of town, very bourgie especially compared to my parent's neighborhood, Phillips. One thing I noticed is, all these white kids were hanging out and going on dates to ice cream parlors and shit like that, within walking distance to their homes. In Phillips, we had nothing like that. There was Curly's, but we stopped going there after one of our friends went there to bail out one of his homies - with a sawed off shotgun. So I imagined getting romantic while staying gully. Ever take someone on a date on the bus?

Ghetto Woo

Let them have their speckless neighborhood love
soft hands inside coffee shops,
ice cream parlours, burger joints,
all within walking distance
of their shredded cash lawns

(though soon they will have parent bought cars and/
access to bars with/ fake Washington State I.D.'s)

I have a plastic red shopping cart
with an aggressive grid pattern
no windows to roll down
but if we roll hard enough
you can feel the wind

who says romance is not a 7-11 on the corner of
25th and Bloomington which is not a Super America
(yet)

the sludge from the slushee machine
pools as a rainbow without rain
I say I luv u like Prince would say
and save money on the letters I didn't use

buy a rose wreathed in thin plastic
for $1.99
romance for the price of lunch money
with a penny to spare
and next to them, astrological forecasts
wrapped tight in tiny tubes
we can check our destiny
at the check out

or we can invest in bus fair
to trip down to Ridgedale
laught at people dressed like pretty gifts
from God
and whisper to them we know the truth
laugh at their gigantic cookies
cry at their starving mannequins

but the question that every boarded up house
in the neighborhood begs to ask

is
can I afford
to deserve you?

Isn't it true
that the one thing history is afraid
of teaching all of us
is that no man
has ever deserved a woman?
Isn't it true
that men have only been lucky
or allowed?

And when it snows on the railroad tracks
under Chicago Avenue
when it snows on top of the parked car
above an alleycat whose globed pupils gleam green
from the headlights of a passing car
when it snows on top
of my neighbor's rusted barbeque grill
the brand name long faded off

and when it snows here
when it snows here
when it snows here
to teach us all
that no one
is above a blanket

won't I have your warm hand
and won't it be enough?

7-22-98


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