Red Dress

her little fingers were pleating
transparent scarlet paper,
fashioning a skirt
for a one –armed Barbie,
her tongue stuck out,
concentrating,
the hot granite slabs beneath her,
covering the trickle of human refuse
that ran and ran
all day long;

around her the traffic wove
poisonous patterns,
honking staccato overtures
to impossible dreams,
under the blinking lights,
the doll dressed up like a washed out tart
on borrowed time,
holding the plastic figurine,
the child laughed;

until the lady
rolled down a window,
a fiver stuck between her rings,
the toy surprised, arching high
over the debris of urban incontinence,
the money in her tiny palm,
her eyes on the girl
with silver ribbons
who peered from the back seat,
her little nose stuck to the glass,
her red dress falling in scalloped waves;

barefoot on a hot granite stone,
over the waves of the city drain,
the traffic finding impossible
paths around her,
concentrating,
her tongue stuck out,
staring through a rectangle
of transparent glass,
the child laughed.

For Dverse Poets where the prompt asks us to borrow one line from “Burning the Old Year” by Naomi Shihab Nye. I chose the line “transparent scarlet paper”