#1 ~ Girl in the Green Dress ⬇︎
Out of
the window of
the truck which I am
driving into the outskirts of
Albuquerque (it is almost spring in
New Mexico The warm air is heavy with
tendency!), out of
the window of
the truck in which I am
the only passenger
I see a bright yellow schoolbus
come to a stop and out of it
delicately stepping
a girl in a green dress! to scroll ~ press and drag
My mouth falls wide open
in awe as I stop also
as required by law
and the presence of officers with
their slung pistolas and enormous bellies
protecting the young
people from the likes of
me.
But the girl in the green dress!
She is so Mexican! She is so
Indian! that the pale
face from Massachusetts is fired
by the black eyes and eyebrows
against the pure olive skin, the long, slow rise
of the cheekbones and the black
straight immaculately shining
hair which plummets (Aieee!
Aieee!) un
encumbered down
to the small
of her back...
And the way
she is stepping
so carefully
as if
she were barefoot
and the streets
of Alameda
were strewn with broken glass.
This is what gives that incredible angle
to the line of her calves
and makes the tips
of her ankles
cut and glint in the sunlight
through window and eyelid
to such dreams as brim up
on the edge of spring:
For she is so much
the thing that she is
that I cannot decide
whether to take her to Brooklyn Heights
to watch Manhattan at midnight
or to Sausalito
to watch San Francisco
emerging
in the early dawn.
She is so contained in her green dress!
That is her territory!
That is where she lives
with the breasts and buttocks and
honeydripping unpenetrated apertures
she has lived with all her life!
Where could I take her
now that she
has gone past me
to do her homework?
(I could come back
tomorrow and ask to borrow
her geography book.
I could say
I was a boy
in a red-checked shirt
trying to get some sense
of the landscape . . . )
But they are waving me on!
They are waving me on with cruel gestures!
O my friends the officers of the outskirts of Albuquerque
With your slung pistolas and enormous bellies
With your rigid enforcement of a 15 MPH school zone limit
Standing outside Albuquerque on the day before the day before
the first day of spring
Beware of the young men who pass you in trucks
They are so easily overcome by beauty
And they may like myself pose a certain threat
Sidney Goldfarb 
Speech, for Instance 1965 #2 ~ ➡︎
Speech, for Instance 1965 #2 ~ ➡︎