The Virgins of Garden City

I only had the name of the city. I passed it several times a week on my way to work. Still, the rest came easy. The imaginative trials of tribulations of that mysterious city in the middle of nowhere...

You should not have come to Garden City,
With your sorrows,
And your promiscuous ways,
Teasing your hair up like a sky-bound kite of cream potatoes,
Teasing our flustered virgins,
Their heaving chests bird cages of canaries
     yellowed by the sad songs they sing,
Their day beds poisoned by the stain of your unsatisfied love,
A warm sun on the pastel-colored wall paper,
And on the exposed flesh left in piles on the day bed,

You were only twenty,
Or twenty-one,
But, damnit, they were so much younger than that,
A wild milk snake among the manicured flowers,
Dapper lilies as untouchable as magnificence,
A thousand sex organs beckoning from the bushes,
They stood a long time gazing into the mirrors of their vanity,
A childish Polaroid taped to the glass,
Assessing the dead eyes that gaze back,
The skin pulled tight across their bird bones,
The purple bruises left by your heavy fists
     like storm clouds above a softly pale and undulating landscape,

You stood behind them,
Holding their long braids,
Breathing on their necks,
Those lifeless virgins locked in little girl rooms,
The daughters of Garden City.

12.2011