7.
while driving down 19th street


Butterflies wintering in Mexico miss out on this--

A sudden warm stretch of January rain
and the adolescent girls from between McDonald's
and the factory stretch their wings to dry
in thin shirts, suddenly tight around their chests.

They're proud to suddenly have new breasts--
new weapons to wield--to leave
bee-stings across the bodies of the young boys
only beginning to realize they should notice.

I've seen what they're trying to do,
and enough to have learned that the bee-stung
breasts of the young girls are not stingers
but wings that must be stretched and dried

before the first tentative flutters that will eventually
leave them to float down to Monterrey, Cancun,
or maybe Sarah Lawrence, or a Big Ten school,
where they will gather around pine trees, bend

the branches collectively, and laugh about the
winter they cracked themselves irresolutely
out of the cocoon of winter coats.


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