Heart Throb

my aunt had a weakness for bobby rydell
posters of him littered the walls of her room

and yet had
to put up with invading Mongols

the room we had been abandoned into
barely had walls

for my brothers and sister
poor would have been a step up

mother dead
father in Califas

it didn’t take a detective
to discover we were orphans

and though all this happened
so long ago

I can’t help
but to swap out the present for the past

against my will of course
and god damn bobby rydell