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Andrena Zawinski, Features Editor at
PoetryMagazine.com, is
author of Traveling
in Reflected Light, a Kenneth Patchen Prize in Poetry; her
most recent full collection, Something
About, is a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award recipient.She
has also authored four
chapbooks. She lives in the San
Francisco Bay Area where she teaches writing.
ABZ Boy Shot in Lucky’s Lot
in the Year of the Rat
His family turned the supermarket parking lot stall
into an altar, lavished it with stalks of quince buds
and peach blossoms inside a bird of paradise vase
for growth and for luck, for love and for life.
In front of his high school photo, they plated
mandarin oranges for wealth and longevity,
lit batches of incense in an auspicious red bowl
for the journey of the faithful.
Someone else had already turned the parking lot stall
into a shooting gallery, someone else made his bones
doming this number one son and maybe is running off
to tag tunnel walls tonight, or maybe getting his
Wah Ching eagle claw tattoo, or maybe doing donuts
in a street corner sideshow, all his nunchucks and guns
aimed at the heavens and missing the mark.
©
Copyright, Andrena Zawinski. |