Celebrate National Poetry Month with us and enjoy a Poetry Per Diem each day for the month of April!
Today’s poem is from Tina Cane’s book of poems titled Once More with Feeling.
A Minor History of Bodega
More a mindset the bodega was where you could get Lemonheads
and Mary Janes a set of radial tires a pack of Rough Riders
and bottles of pineapple douche or for two quarters a half-pint
of chocolate milk to wash down your Roland’s Fried Pork Rinds
just in time for Michael Aguirre to follow up on his promise
to punch you in the face which you had dared him to do which he
later did against the brick wall near Faye’s place so when your mother
her eyes still set on her sizzling wok said What did you expect?
you just had to snag a stack of quarters from her bag so you could
stomp back to the corner for a box of Red Hots and sit on the steps
of the Laundromat sucking the color from each bit of sweet
before shooting it from between your teeth onto the sidewalk
until the pavement around your feet was a dingy constellation charting
your indifference towards any transaction that didn’t first pass
beneath a pane of bulletproof glass
This book can be found in the Island Free Library
collection, upstairs under call number 811.6 CAN. Stay tuned for another poem tomorrow!
