Mary Austin Speaker

M.A. Speaker is a student at Emerson College in Boston and can be reached at m_speaker@wesley.it.emerson.edu

seventwentysixninetyseven

Boston early morning says GO NOW

worn out songs drift sadly into parking lots,

cats yawn on porches, stretch sleek backs.

I have an idea:

let's all celebrate Saturday,

crack open forty ounces of piss-beer

say hello to to morning with a spit and a smoke;

tomorrow you'll wake up again, see

your skin moist with morning's fresh heat &

pull the sheet over your head.

I'm twenty and already shrinking--

the radio man has taught me little

and all the swell I get is drivel

from the mouths of old poet-men.

But the parking lot's full as a tick,

red-blood filled bodies drunk collapsing and hot

swimming in and out of it like a stagnant pool.

Three dozen alarm clocks sound off like cornets,

tired and powerful as cadillacs,

and california seeps in through the back of my skull.

I drink my beer and say my prayers in the morning,

and the parking lot turns to unhealthy fat on the sides of me,

gets to be the hinderment of my grace.

This is what I learn from life three thousand miles from it,

this and a cat and two kids running senseless below the balcony.

Mary Austin Speaker