slum
goddess
Maybe she
thought
that
if she
main-
lined
enough
stuff
dressed
like some
kind
of
resurrected
Warhol
queen
and strutted
her
stuff up &
down
McDougal
Street
she'd be
anointed
the Official
Slum
Goddess of
the
Lower East
Side
or maybe
she'd
get so
strung
out, so
hyper
no one
would
notice or
care
what she
did
until she
dressed
up as some
low
budget super
girl
and did a
swan
dive from the
top
floor of
some
closed-for-the-
duration
tenement
high rise to
see
if the stash
of
super balls
sewn
into her
garments
and bundled
in
her cowl
would
make her
rebound
as high as
she
felt, as
high
as the
moon.
flower
children
The look had
been
new
fashionable in the
60's
The Songs of
Innocence
and Experience
verses tattooed
amid
the Wildflowers
and
cosmic
symbols
the yin and the
yang
of their
bodies
though,
now, after
decades
of aging
and abuse,
the look
was
burned out
heavily
weighted
onto the
experience
side
downcast
as sun
flowers
weary
of time
She looked as
if
" who can hear the teeth in
the roses
gnash, forecasting winter?
old woman
who carries heaven in one
plain brown
bag and hell in the other."
Jack Evans
an evil
higher
Authority
had
been playing
all
her deep
sueno
canciones in a
key
of
metaphysical
distress,
time
signatures so
far
over the
line
and out
there
her
extremities
had begun to
twitch
in
anticipation
of the next
series
of notes, you
could see
that
she was
trying
to hold her
hands
out for a
21st
century
version
of alms for the
poor
but her body
&
brain were
so
out of synch,
it
wouldn't
happen
in a
million
years, there
seemed
no point
trying
to aid &
abet,
she had
already
received her
life
sentence &
there
was no hope
for a last
minute
reprieve.
well done, as always, alan. . .
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