Looking back on it now,
I wonder if those fat rainbow shoelaces
were the best gift I ever received,
arriving as they did unbidden
from an Easter Bunny I didn’t even
believe in anymore. Bless my mother for
stockings and baskets for nonbelievers,
admission of magic after fairy time was done,
fat rainbow shoelaces for 10-year-old girls
in the ‘80s. Perfect. Just perfect.
Tag Archives: 1980s
Holy Hegemony, Batman
That’s what I might have said
in 1989 (which, as we all know,
is the year that, somewhere else,
Taylor Swift was busy being born),
even though I didn’t know what
hegemony meant and, OK, since
we’re telling truths here, I’d
need to Google it today if I
wanted to front like I knew it
all along, its full meaning,
anything other than a vague
notion of its sense. But I
trafficked in vague notions
then, in 1989, of myself and
of the world, of what it was
that I wanted, the possible
futures I saw in the window
over the couch as I looked
at my reflection and sang
to myself so I could know if
I was any good at singing.
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Catching up. For the PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day 15. Prompt: “Holy _______”
Out into Nothing
It’s a long day
when there’s a freeway
down the middle of your heart.
Falling vampires in the shadows.
Good girls are made to be broken.
Is that your name written in the sky?
What carries you away?—Jesus?
Elvis? Horses? Your boyfriend? Or is it
all the bad boys of Southern California?
I wanted a fall song, and somehow I ended up with “Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty. There’s more to it than I remembered—lots for me to work with, and a real sense of place.
Marilyn Rauch Cavicchia 