The Crazy Lady Last Friday

A lump of garbage bag
Crinkle sack, plastic wrap glory
Around a lamp pole
Or maybe a twig that your dog picks up
From time to time and drools on.
Mop of rust red tangles
Above paper cut folds
That make up glassy baubles
Without crow’s feet or wrinkles.
Connect the dots like chicken pox
Those laughable age spot freckle dots
That make you want to reach out
And trust, trust, trust
A kiss, a tear, a hysteria
That comes with a pair of old lady leggings
And toes that are too big
To be painted red
Like faded lipstick on sidewalk cracks.
The bones of the tree branches
Are coming for you
Two drugged out hands
Embracing you into the garbage bag breast
And the scent of motor oil
And cheap cologne.
“You aren’t French lady,”
You want to say,
“You’re just crazy.”

-Lauren Hatch
April 24, 2007

(So the story with this is that a lady walks up to us and starts asking where her daughter is at our school. She says that she's scared because her ex husband in vegas wants her daughter because she didn't pay him a debt and to pay her back he wants to sell the girl to the sex trade. She's really lucid in flip flops and a huge eskimo jacket in the middle of summer, saying that she's in disguise.... Well after a long time of her ranting and rambling to us (we're freshmen mind you and very very scared of druggies) she walks away saying she's from another world. Yeah... so the girl ends up being a friend of mine a year from then and her mother is a complete drug addict and was totally lying to us. The whole expirience was weird. She came back a day later and we had to call the cops on her for breaking a restraining order.)