ANN CEFOLA

GIRLS' NIGHT OUT

Heavy breasted, dark eyed, they praise
the rented linens and Kelly’s cut hydrangeas.
Lighting up, they smoke like soldiers,
their bodies untouched by tiny fingers for a few hours,
unthreaded by feces and drool.

In this late summer garden, I consider my uterus
untraveled as a new triple-digit Interstate,
a wide boulevard Haussman might have built,
tree-lined and unpopulated: a passage I walk every day,
sometimes fast, blindly; other times singing, My avenue, my very own.

Hearing that reveille once again, I rise from a collapsible chair
and make an excuse — quick, think — to leave
these girls euphoric with wine and free time,
squealing over a skunk edging the garden —
something about having to cross a dark street in a hurry.
 

Ann Cefola’s chapbook, Sugaring, will appear early next year from Dancing Girl Press and her translation of French poet Hélène Sanguinetti’s work, Hence, this cradle, is forthcoming from Seismicity Editions. In 2001, she won the Robert Penn Warren Award judged by John Ashbery.