poem of the day 04.30.14

talking intellectual freedom with a bare assed girl

before i can get a word out

there’s a picture of her bare ass

on my work computer screen

she says it’s for her boyfriend

he’s been in prison for a year

he’s been missing this, she says

and i can obviously see why

…but mam, is all i can get out

what? she says

i’m not embarrassed by it

it’s not that, i tell her

this can get me in deep shit here

i thought you were printing out a resume, i say

i still am, she tells me

as the two of us stare at her bare ass

it’s one of those self-pictures

fresh out of the shower

the side of her face and her toned back

then down to her wonderfully youthful ass

if i were her and her age

i probably wouldn’t be embarrassed either

i’d walk around brooklyn naked on sundays

i can’t print that for you, i tell her

she still doesn’t understand why not

but she minimizes the photo

much to the chagrin of the teen boy

who’d been standing behind us the whole time

you’re just scared, she says

tell you what

i’ll print the other pictures for you, i say

we get the one of her in her tight burgundy mini

the one of her in a puerto rican flag bikini

and the close-up shot of her mugging for the camera

all in full page black and white

do you think that’ll hold him off

until he gets out? i ask

i hope, she says

he’s out in twenty-five days

one can only imagine what he’s going to do

to that bare ass once he’s back on the outside

when i give the photo prints to her

she smiles and folds them up into an envelope

like the dutiful girlfriend

he’s really going to love these, she says

then she frowns

are you sure you can’t print that picture

of my bare ass?

as much as i’d love to, i tell her

i think i understand now, she says

then you understand america, i tell her

she shrugs and walks away

licking the envelope

the cloth covering her rear end

a mere formality between us now

the two of us having forgotten

all about that resume of hers.