then, the m.p.'s arrive, they don't find me.
i'm disguised as a boy in a fuchsia gasoline bonnet,
checkpoints, basements & tunnels
locked & mapped
like the running lifeline
on the palm of my hand,
& hid inside the white migration of cottonwood wind.
queen of the fourth of july,
my nodding head through the open hatch
of an m1a2 abrams,
a brat, i am.
the anguish
of military housing & truck-stop uncles.
the poor
girl's netherworld
of hand me down things.
the night,
with its kingdom of street lamps & overseas cigarette machines
& the restless purple martins.
how we hid, how we waited
like wolves,
already gone
by the time
anyone started looking.
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