This girl,
burns past me in the Student Union.
Her passing flash awakens memories
of days dragging around more heat
beneath my jeans than my years
should have stoked. I longed
to inflame the sky with shibboleths,
and watch them flash like fireworks.
This girl,
who can’t be hauling around
more than twenty years, wears
black sweat pants low slung.
The waistband straddles
the curve of her hipbone –
a circus rider performing tricks
for her audience. ‘PINK’ appliqued in pink
outlined in pink sequins glitters
across her butt (the space between ‘I’ and ‘N’
floats over her coccyx) twitching
as she walks away.
This girl’s
hips affirm louder as they sway
than the slogans burning my lips.
No matter the cause, her bumper sticker
assumes mythic proportions
against a load-bearing bumper.
Be she touting a balm against violence,
a signature hue, a favored singer, or
support for breast cancer research,
whatever her say,
this girl
has my vote.

—

Karin L. Frank is an award-winning author who lives on a farm in the Kansas City area. Her poems and stories have been published in a wide variety of venues both in the U.S.A. and abroad. Her first book of poems, A Meeting of Minds, was released in April, 2012.