HARMONICA CON VIRGINS

The Harmonica con Virgins is the last first day
of that eternally postponed a pox o' lips, full eclipse
when mercifully no one will tell you to get a life.

First time tragedy, second time farce.
The underground shelters, the shotguns,
the tingly fear of Monday Oct 23, 1962
in the suburban synagogue parking lot
waiting for mothers to pick us up,
looking up at the sky for death
without angels of the rapture
just the end of homework.

The day of our collective death,
the day the music began.
No Beatles, No Stones, No Hendrix,
no nothing without us knowing we were,
already, in a parallel universe.

Barbara Joan Schaffer