Bodega

This is a poem about Stanley
who is twelve and hates his father.
Most twelve-year-olds
learn to loathe the men who
made them: Stanley started
minutes after he was born
when two cold and blistered hands
snatched him from the placid bed
between his mother’s breasts.
Sooner or later each of us yearns 
to grope an edge of memory
but since the girls that Stanley knows
do not yet have those pillowed swells
he steals into a bodega
on Sixth to watch Miah
the blonde thirtysomething cashier
sell soda and lotto tickets
to every weary stripe of life
‘til Sandro climbs the basement stairs
and screams get lost you little shit.
Stanley flees, remembering
those rounded mounds
that bounced as she stood
on tip-toe to reach
a carton of unfiltered Camels
and swayed like bagged melons
when she stooped to grab a fallen nickel.
Miah knows the boy was watching
and later, in bed, tries to
tell the guy she’s seeing of her mother’s
first mastectomy. But the moment
his head hits the pillow beside her
she is facing a dark wall
dreaming of Stanely. If only
she could take him in, raise him
to be the kind of man who
loves women and will let a woman
love him back, a man
who turns to her and says
tomorrow let’s ditch work and learn
the angles of our searching faces,
memorize each line and curve
so when one leaves the heat
of this bed, the other can
trace their image in air.

[from Mediation Archipelago, Tiger Bark Press, 2018]