That’s how you sell sombreros, from the bottom up, truth to tell,
Where a neighborhood girl with fine big thighs in little shorts[1]
And a Mona Lisa face has one foot up on the second step
Of her row house, her ass pushed out to traffic as she alternates
Trying on her goods–now blue, now black, now multi-colored,
Now red[2]–and turning her head to and fro like a weathervane
As I ride ‘round the block a dozen times or more
Before deciding to park, walk over, and buy a blue one,
And
then ask her out for midnight shrimp at Jimmy Wu’s.
[1]Those fine big thighs cuffed in faded jeans,
And I’ll guess no matter how hard I try after dinner to encircle
Each leg in turn with both my hands, I just bet I never get
My thumbs and fingers to touch, there’ll be that much cocoa
Skin left to play with, that much extra flesh for my tongue
To define the pores, follicles and indentations of.
[2]She works in rough three- or four-minute intervals,
In circular motion about her stacks of hats for sale,
From blue to black to multi-colored to red and back again,
Slowly at first but then gaining in clockwise tempo,
With those legs and that ass in a muffled quiver
When they come to a temporary stop and she walks
Up the steps to rest on a shaded porch, while a guy
Far older than me collects money and replenishes
The piles of sombreros before she comes back
To the sweet action once more and her turnarounds
To passing traffic, with a salute of her left hand cupped
Just-so (to keep grazing the brim of her own sombrero).
[1]Those fine big thighs cuffed in faded jeans,
And I’ll guess no matter how hard I try after dinner to encircle
Each leg in turn with both my hands, I just bet I never get
My thumbs and fingers to touch, there’ll be that much cocoa
Skin left to play with, that much extra flesh for my tongue
To define the pores, follicles and indentations of.
[1]She works in rough three- or four-minute intervals,
In circular motion about her stacks of hats for sale,
From blue to black to multi-colored to red and back again,
Slowly at first but then gaining in clockwise tempo,
With those legs and that ass in a muffled quiver
When they come to a temporary stop and she walks
Up the steps to rest on a shaded porch, while a guy
Far older than me collects money and replenishes
The piles of sombreros before she comes back
To the sweet action once more and her turnarounds
To passing traffic, with a salute of her left hand cupped Just-so (to keep grazing the brim of her own sombrero).
William C. Blome writes poetry and short fiction. He lives wedged between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is a master’s degree graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has seen the light of day in such fine little mags as Poetry London, PRISM International, In Between Hangovers, Fiction Southeast, Roanoke Review, and The California Quarterly.