Friday, April 23, 2010

NaPoWriMo #23 - Circumstance Unforeseen

National Poetry Month Prompt #26 (From ReadWritePoem) - Unlikely Couples
        Read Write Poem member Sage Cohen has a terrific suggestion for today’s poems: Write a poem in which you combine a speaker and an event that normally don’t go together (such as sports broadcasters and poetry writing), as Jay Leeming does in his poem, “Man Writes Poem.”


Circumstance Unforeseen

She owns the corner now –
Standing there daily,
Sign in hand…
Scuffed white stilettos and
Tattered white mini skirt,
She tucks dollar bills and loose coins
in a worn-out Gucci bag.
“No matter what a woman looks like,
if she’s confident, she’s sexy,” she says
as she waves at a passing motorist.
“I’ve just gotta find a new BFF.”
She brushes dirty blond tendrils
away from the dark smudges on her cheeks,
reminding me of a fairytale gone wrong.
“The only rule is don’t be boring and
dress cute wherever you go.
Life is too short to blend in.”
She smiles, displaying yellow, scaly teeth.
“What happened,” I asked.
She starts to cry –“My pets are gone,”
She sobs.
“Pets?”
“Every woman should have four pets
in her life. A mink in the closet,
a jaguar in the garage, a tiger in her bed, and
a jackass who pays for everything.”
I’m too shocked to speak.
A dark car slows.
A young boy tosses a cheeseburger out the window.
She scrabbles to retrieve the welcome gift.
“OMG…that’s so nice. Maybe he’ll
Be my BFF….
Maybe he’ll be my BFFE…”

©Bridget Nutting, 2010

(All italicized quotes are attributed to Paris Hilton.)

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