Victoria Marinelli

Lament for Wilhelmina

Someone named Wilhelmina
– no last name given –
once owned my copy of Ferlinghetti’s
A Coney Island of the Mind.
Bagged beast of my bookstore
prowls, in every off-season,
I’ve found this
volume with its ankles caught
in rusted traps of used
romances, Westerns, sci-fi.
Wilhelmina, what have you done?
I’ve plundered your dead dreams
and have you to thank
for freeways fifty lanes wide
and steamheated cemeteries

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