San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly

LALO KIKIRIKI
Nekkid Ladies in Monterey

The nekkid ladies on Congress Avenue

are pinker than Rubens', 

pinker than Fragonard's,

the deep deep pink of a 

first-grader's bouncing pack

climbing David Street

behind her mother.

The nekkid ladies that bloom on Cannery Row

are not so pink, 

but they nod demurely, sway

in the seabreeze 

under a fitful sun,

colored like the mythic flesh

of Dora's girls.

There are tentacles writhing on the Aquarium roof –

sea creatures

lithe as nekkid ladies,

pearl, yellow, coral.

They slap the sundown wind;

they wait for dark

to glow.