regalia o' americana

Debutantes are real

    a fact I learned 

        not too long ago

I'm 20 years too old

              to ponder such things

Yet here's a real Deb before me

    Southern belle, 

        modern Scarlett O'Hara,

            teach you a diet 

    before she leaves ya

['She's gotta blaze, charity things']

    She knows all the rules 

        I was never told

the hidden 

    stench of poverty

how far from dump 

            do I need to get

before the poor can't be 

        sniffed on me

she clocked me from a mile away.

She is

    hoop skirt in the attic

        but it still fit last year

            It fit. 

Her waist the same at 

sixty-[redacted] years old

        as it was when she was 19.

 Girlhood a red badge
            of courageous menses

flowing 

            down 

 

        the only handle left

                   to grasp

is from 

           her past

       frozen in time

   youth before wisdom

                male gaze parade

    values a girl, not a woman, LOVES

innocent and naïve faithful eyes 

blinded:

    this is what happens to women

        still trying to be girls for men.