In my play there are just
Two scenes
In the first a girl loses her sock
(Maybe she is skipping rope
Or on skates)
And squats with underwear showing
To a gaggle of twelve-year-olds--
Squats to pull it back into position.
One whose name is Vlad
Dreams about her underwear
And the watcher-women of the village say
she is a prostitute.

At eighteen she is married and pregnant
And Vlad smokes his fingers brown
And She will not let him touch her—
the children, you know—and the lopping gut…

In my second scene the wife waits for a trolley
With her brown stockings loose around her
Stagnant legs, for brown Vlad is dead.
And in front of the track in figures eight
She sees a girl, buzzed by boys on bikes
Waiting for her to dismount, cheering when
Her skirt mounts to her thighs.
The boys laugh and say
Did you see her flowers did you see
The petals? And the women
Waiting, watching, say hissing
Whore.