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Free Bird


by Dulce Maria Menendez


I stop for Coup de' Villes and blue eyed men who run
marathons of ghosts and what if I was in love with a 
boy named Roberto in our Spanish class in High School
who was half Japanese and half German and preferred penises 
to my virginity and what if the boy next door was in love with the
other girl next door and not me and what if her name 
was Maria and what if my husband later would leave me 
for a Maria and what of it if I break to admire the canary
yellow long cars parked in front of the old Ozark House
filled with men who were shipped off to Viet Nam when
they were 17 and what if I ride my bike past the golf course 
across the Ozark House at sunset as these same men search
for their keys after three scotches on the rocks and who may 
have been my father but are not because my father was 
too busy tripping on LSD as his lobotomy hummed a little tune 
from long ago when he was young and living the life of a prince 
in Havana, the prodigal son who should have taken on the family 
business but instead was imprisoned by Fidel in a cold cell naked 
and as his paranoia sank in, the rest is history and here I am and what
if Free Bird starts to play in my headphones and I fly 
like a little boy catching the moon while I think of you?



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