The Girls in the Van

I see the van sometimes, idling by
the nightclubs and the bars,
the drive-thru restaurants.

They wear the uniforms of girls
of their respective periods: leg warmers,
tees, scrunchies, hairspray (gallons
and gallons of that), and each
is wrought with some old wound:
a slash across the throat
is most common, on occasion
a stab to the chest. Nothing can staunch
the laughing, though; the endless
flow of youthful joy.

The youngest is sixteen, the oldest twenty-three.

And now across the parking court tarmac,
they've lain their gaze on me.

That I'm still flesh and bone
and not just echo of those things
feels hardly relevant.

These weird facsimiles of male violence,
these all-that-now-remains of young women,
these tragic phantoms always caught
between the streetlights and the dawn,
glimpsed but never really seen by passing motorists...