James Lineberger

IN THE PINK

if you could see
this one she is so beautiful her age
just barely starting to show
still able to hold it in and how she pretends
not to know her effect on others
but that’s not all because get this she is the best
breakfast cook in town
and whatever restaurant she migrates to next that’s where
the truckers and cops and all the others
who are the first
to find the best places to go go to
and the word gets around fast when annette is fixing
to make a move
and who would not fall all over himself
to follow her hoping against hope to make some clever move of his own
dreaming always
that her bold smile is directed at him and no other
except life LIFE doesn’t just give
it takes and TAKES AND TAKES said annette
to her niece the other night
said look at this is that a extra line there it’s the third time
i’ve tried the goddamn thing but i want
to know if i been crying so much i can’t see straight or is it just
god hates me
like the preacher said america deserves it and we better wake up
like those people falling upside down off the trade center
because what’s the use
it’s him that asshole steve that got me pregnant two months ago
only i lucked out and miscarried and now
this fucked up pissy little test says the bastard went
and did it to me again

Location:	Hell's Half Acre, North Carolina
Email:	jdline@vnet.net
Publications:	Stirring, etc.

- February 2002 - On the Way to California (1849) Staying in the Lines My Best I Hate Your Poetry. Useful in the pink Mother Visiting her Daughter’s Grave After a Fashion Between Lately When the Plow Is Still That Was It The Wound and I - Stirring's Best Love Poems - Curving Corn-Fed summer True Love Conduit of Rain Gripping Aphrodite