Meg Kearney

Living in the Volcano

All I want is a falafel, a Mountain Dew,
and First Piccolo in the marching band.

Oh, my sunless tan puts an orange slant
on everything I say. I mean I want to be

first, and that's not all. It’s like this:
my tongue is a branding iron shaped in

an "X" (if I kiss your eyes, you’re dead),
First Trombone turns left at the 40, and

the rest of us wave bye-bye, too grumpy
to follow. We say, Let’s practice more, earn

this pride of prima donnas a scholarship
to Party University. We say, Let’s melt

down the horns, buy us some brewskies
and vitamin M. We need to forget,

on our two-day bender, how much we detest
ourselves. But this is high school. And now

Mother, our First Fan, has skipped town
with the bake sale money and Finnegan,

our only tuba. Who needs TV drama? This
is life in the volcano. This is as cold as it gets.