COMPUTERS and COMPOSITION 10(3), August 1993, page 91
Dolores
Joe Amato
There were no magnolia trees in the neighborhood
but there should have been. Lunchbox in hand
I'd stroll home afternoons
to the only rose I'd ever really know, the one
who'd smile a smile that matched the real roses
of the real rose bushes she'd planted
on the side of our house.
The writer in me, like the one in you--the one
in all of us, the one that reads and always has read
through the lines, the lines
that today are simply lines no longer, the network
that today is simply a network no longer, that makes
the writer in me the writer
in you, but something different, too--the writer
in me likes to think of that time
as Dolores. Let me explain or
try to or, perhaps
it's up to you.
It was in the name of the street, Dolores Terrace
south, in fact, South Dolores or Dolores
South, as some would have it, and of a time
of the four of us, of a time
of a teacher named Mrs. Bliss, no shit
helped me remember m-i-s-s-i-s-s and I
guess it was of a time long since past and
far too short or, perhaps
long enough or even too long, I can't tell, I guess
such times are still hard to take or
should be.
The smile helps, like the roses
even if both can no longer be what once
they were, and that's o.k.
that's better, really, that helps to explain
how things can get all messed up, and how
being a woman or a man or in love or with kids
can have nothing whatever to do with flowers
or spelling or lines or networks, and why
the writer in me and the writer in you
might both of us both agree and disagree
when George Raft explains to his mother in the film that
"You never can depend on girls named Dolores."