Bonnie and the Working Girls

*Winner* of the 2024 Goodman Fund Poetry Award at CCNY

Steam rising from water heated on the stove—

carried in stock pots to the blue plastic kiddie pool

in the front yard—joins our voices, as we sing

“Aint No Mountain High Enough.”

My brother and I, children of the night,

lay on our backs in the water, gazing at the stars.

Our grandmother’s booming cackle

greets the full moon

and we jump up to dance, sing, laugh, and rejoice.

Round and round, we spin about the

Douglas Fir, planted on my first Christmas.

A tambourine jingles in my grandmother’s hand.

A hula-hoop races round my brother’s neck.

A long towel, a cape draped from my shoulders,

blows in the rolling summer wind.

We are performing vagabonds;

the big tent steps away inside the house.

We are vampires fiending on music and laughter;

melodies dripping from our lips,

staining our shirts with treble and bass notes.

We are witches dancing our magic into existence;

chanting our spells to celestial bodies

and closing our séance with screams of, “To family!”

because our bloodline is the richest power we wield.

Our suburban neighbors say nothing about our howling.

They are the owners of the corner convenience store

who sell me cigarettes despite my being a child,

knowing they’re for the tobacco-stained lips of my grandmother.

They are the motorcycle riders who rev their engines as they

pass us by; our bicycles dressed with playing cards on the spokes

and flashlights duct taped to the handlebars.

They are the drunks who park half on their lawn

after leaving the bar two blocks away where

our grandmother’s band often plays well into the night.

Once the water goes cold and our young eyes grow heavy,

our grandmother wraps us in heavy quilts and

hand-knitted woolen socks made by her mother.

The rock music is changed to Disney movies set on low.

Flying carpets and rooms that clean themselves

roll across the movie screen of our dreams

and our grandmother flies off with her bass guitar.

She meets with her coven of enchantresses,

all dressed in black with their instruments of conjuring,  

because they are Bonnie and the Working Girls;

A band of sirens ready to seduce another tavern

full of followers, tipsy on brews of barley and hops.