The Papalote Princess

“There’s pigeons down on Market Square.
She’s standing in her underwear…”
from Mary Jane’s Last Dance by Tom Petty

There are no jobs in Papalote
so she moved to the city
where lies are, at least, made of steel.

She met all the famous poets there.
Sister, you’ve come a long way
to a place littered with astronaut trash.

Your brown eyes and legs in the apartment,
two words left standing
by the Scandinavians.

Henry took floors from the skyscrapers,
but they looked out of place
in the Papalote moat.

So he wrote a letter to the
Virgen de San Juan
and promised like a house

to keep doors and windows shut.
Love is not a rat that gnaws,
love is not Catwoman Dominguita

naked except for underwear.
What buzzes doesn’t have to swear
Yeats and toilet paper.

They don’t send out the Gestapo
just because you were speeding, honey.
Please take your foot off my throat.