South Beach Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Zombies and ex-presidents,
Kissing cousins, try to make friends
With little girls in bright blue bonnets
Waiting for their mothers by the bus stop
Under the banyan trees in South Miami-
They all go together unaccompanied
By the sun, to shopping malls where
They used to sell their blindfolded brothers as slaves
Who could not see the desperate Cubans
In their rafts being circled by sharks
Being circled by the Coast Guard so close to South Beach-
Here pink fellows play Russian Roulette
With the venereal diseases of their loneliness:
Its cliché, but they all have bichon frises as pets,
And sing in dresses in the cabaret on Tuesdays
And live in lonely little apartments
Overlooking parking lots, overlooking the sea
Where spotty mermaids, the part time whores,
Wash their scabby knees in the salt and sing
Melodies of lost memories, to the little girls’ parade,
All done up in blue and pink ribbon,
Like packages with legs when they grow up
For the influential men, politicians and
Flesh hungry zombies, the sororities, like veil,
The tiny stalls they are made to live in, and taught
To bedazzle over looking the sea,
Waiting for the bus to pick them up after shopping:
The zombies, ex-presidents, little girls, and me.