Ambition
Ambition is always a dirty word
When it modifies woman
As in “Could Hillary possibly be the
Most ambitious woman in the United States?”
Or in my late father-in-law’s favorite:
“I’ve never seen a woman as ambitious as you,”
Which always left me feeling as if I had just farted.
Alone, on the dictionary page, the word
Is as mellifluous as Beverly Sills conjugating
A Rossini aria.
Random House’s first definitions?
“An earnest desire for some achievement, power,
Fame, wealth, etcetera.” Feel the build-up?
As in what gets a man the merit badge he wears daily
Yet for a woman it’s a cowlick she has to zap
With Mega Super Hold hairspray to keep from flying away; or
It’s wax she must dissolve, then scrape off the linoleum,
To prevent (Gasp!) premature yellowing.
On the last aluminum blue Wednesday in May
The city sits in prison
The smog like iron locks
And on the radio an alert
A warning about the public enemy
On the last metallic Wednesday in May
Cars stud the freeway like magnet links
At the beach similar children
Smile easily as they run past
Running over petroleum black holes
Their soles nicked by discarded cans
Limp beige sheets snag their legs
I baste my body in Bain de Soleil
Roasting away the tracks of varicosity
Browning out the white bars from old pregnancies
Advertising only what I can stand to trade
A hundred young mothers
Tuck their straps into their property
Tack their Clairol blonde against sun bleach
A hundred umbrellas guard fat babies
On the last Wednesday in May I pull away
Into a solitary book an allegory
It’s called The Dangling Man
The book satisfies me
Portable radios transpose the surf
With bubble gum pop that needs no words
A lifeguard catches a scabby mutt
Before it can endanger woman or child
On that final smelted aluminum May day
I try to remove a gaping wound of tar from my foot
Aware of someone’s sunburned baby falling and rising
Wanting to make waves, wanting to say
That kid looks like your baby
Wanting the response to be unpredictably refreshing
BIO: My poems have appeared in ABCtales, Samisdat Review, Wascana Review, The Rag, Verdad, and other journals. In an earlier life I contributed to many publications in Southern California, among them the Hollywood Reporter, Pico Post, Beverly Hills Independent, Malibu Times, Classics West magazine, and L.A. Times. A chapter I wrote deconstructing my poem, "Letter from L.A." will appear in Poem, Revised, edited by Robert Hartwell Fiske (Marion Street Press) later this year. For the last two decades I have instructed college students in the joys of language arts and humanities.
