16

do you bite down
on dum-dum lollipops?

sweet sting of 
glass in your teeth

once a week 
before the farmer's market 
we'd use the drive through
at the bank & the teller
would ask how many
kids there were--
dropping two dum dums in
the envelope with 
a stack of bills

did you know that 
pluto is the only planet
made of glass?

fragile & ready to be
chewed off the paper stick 

there are 16 flavors
of dum-dum lollipops &
none of them worth while 
accept for blue raspberry 

i don't think i ate
candy when i was 16 

i'm thinking about
each as the surface of
sticky moons 

i bought a bag of 100 
& never ate a single 1 

it's still sitting
in the back of my closet--

cover your head in a wax wrapper

my dad says that at church
all the girls used to have
to cover their heads & if
they didn't bring a veil 
the nuns would put a paper towel
over their heads

i guess i wonder if god thinks
of us like lollipops sometimes

there are only 16 types of people 

& he only likes the clear 
ones that are supposed to taste
like piña colada

what we all really wanted
was tootsie pops

as if you could discover
the core of the sun was 
soft & chocolate flavored

flattening out wrappers 
on our thighs to try & find
a shooting star on them--

the native american caricature
back facing us
head dress trailing down his spine
his bow & arrow aimed 
at the distant north star

will he ever shoot at it
or is this just for show?

are we just using him
to guide us to collect our
stars & return to 
the back seats of cars where
we traded candy

who knew all celestial bodies
have 1 of 12 flavors

i think i'd like to
live on a tootsie pop wrapper

one of the kids roller 
skating with pig tails 

or girl with braids
& a baseball bat slung
over her shoulder

it reminds me of saturday mornings 
in the batting cages with 
my dad-- the metal ping
of bat colliding with green softball

we'd get candy at the flea market 

how many skulls cracked between
my 10-year-old wobbly teeth?

i could be
one of the children kneeling 
& playing marbles

i would choose a blue wrapper (naturally)

live easy in white outlines

it would be like stepping 
into recess for the rest of
my life

maybe i'd get lucky
& be on the same wrapper
as the shooting star

you'd flatten my out 
on the thigh & keep me
in a box on your desk 
all summer before
mom made you throw us away

& when you were looking
i would elbow past
the archer & pluck
the white five-pointed
star down for myself

i don't have any desire
to eat these lollipops

i can't give them away though

they're already in orbit