Paid-for-Poem

Ana “bought” (supported?  inspired?  incentived?) a poem from Molly Gaudry – it rocks! Worth the cash-o-line? You decide:

YOU ARE ONE BAD MAMA JAMA, MISS ALABAMA

for Amy King and Ana Božičević

Hitching home, I hear her holler and honk, and when I turn

she pulls over and parks, levels her gauzy eyes on my face, says,

Where ya headed, Doll? I’d like to try on that tiara sometime.

So I get in, still wearing my suit and sash, which she tells me

to take off and tie to her antenna. Baby, you got a flag, fly it.

I lean back and close my eyes, recalling the onstage question

I’d answered about whether Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass

should be banned from public school libraries. My mother,

I’d said, and her mother, and her mother, before her, were librarians.

Is this America, I asked, or were freedom of speech and democracy

and art and free expression and love things that we no longer

cared about? And how was this the message we were sending

to our children? And if you really wanted to ask a question

about moral decency then why were they asking women onstage

who had just changed out of bikinis before the watching gaze

of all of America? Was voyeurism American? Which is when

I realized I’d said enough, so smiled and went back to my place

marker. I liked your talent. What? Your talent. I cracked a grin.

Oh yeah? Yeah, I said I did, didn’t I? How’d you learn to do that,

anyway? I looked out the window, past the kudzu and wildflowers

whipping by, into the distance where it seemed so cool and quiet

in the darkness of those far-off trees. Benny, I say. Benny the

Wonder Bunny. He was a housewarming gift from my father

to my mother when they bought their first home. I was six.

Till then we’d lived in apartments. They were working more

because the mortgage was higher than rent ever was, so what

I did was wait for them at the door, and when they came home I’d

show them whatever trick we’d perfected. It was a long time before

I was any good. Well I thought you were great, just great. I thought

you said you weren’t going to come, you couldn’t support pageantry.

She shrugs. So I came to support you, okay? Why are you in your suit?

I thought I needed a ride. In the backseat, Benny XIV nibbles a carrot

in his cage. Good doggie, I say, reaching back to stroke his ears.

She doesn’t get it, and neither do I. Sometimes we just say things,

I guess, because why not. You are one bad mama jama, Miss Alabama.

She places her hand on my thigh and I sigh, lace my fingers in hers.

–Molly Gaudry

~~

At this rate, she’s gonna write a book soon… perhaps she’ll write one for you too.

[Via http://amyking.wordpress.com]