from The Philadelphia Inquirer

Guard turns to pizza, iTunes for recruiting

There she lay, lips parted, in a hither come, tuition bill, top fifty smile.

Hair: blinding blonde. Eyes: blue, unswerving. The smear he'd left spread bit by tiny bit

neck to left breast, still too hot to congeal. "ain't sayin" he stood over her,

"she a gold digger" offending slice in hand,

Still she offered him the world, with her "wasn't long till I called you mine"

printed surge of c'mon in, a tacked on wink of breezy invitation, dangling an entry at the end

of her promise. Bells rang, doors swung, alarms pulled - hollered get in or out. "yeah yeah,

since you've been" (a girl like her in Paul's Pizza) laid waiting, on the counter

he'd slid two bills across hundreds of times.

Cardboard body shipped from Trenton maybe, "as if you know me" her arched back spread

between his two palms "than I ever knew myself"

And her eyes were oceans, and the slant where her waist denimed into hip

was a horizon, "you heard of hell" like the smear of strip mall lights

in his bedroom window, "well I was sent from it" the interstate rolling further than

his eyes could reach from his window.

He bit, forgetting. "You got me feelin"

This time it was tomato sauce, exploding down in a deep red splatter

from her stomach "like I'm supposed to feel." Full and sated on the drive home, his name

was Sylvester Stallone, was Bill or Jane, he was on his way to have it all.



Cecilia Corrigan is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania and assistant poetry editor at Xconnect magazine.
"Guard turns to pizza, iTunes for recruiting" appeared in the Inquirer on Tuesday, January 3, 2006.