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Image by  Piano Piano

Image by Piano Piano

POP Love! "Like a Prayer"

February 15, 2018

By Kerri French

I mail a letter to Madonna
          asking her to adopt me.

Ten years old, there is no
          other woman I imagine

I could love more—
           even the teenagers

in the neighborhood agree,
           Like a Prayer falling

from the open windows
           of cars parked outside

the pool of the apartment complex—
           my bedroom window

left open, too, just wide enough
          to slip out to the roof

of the utility shed below
          the way an older kid

showed me when we first moved in.
          From the sloped roof

of the shed, the whole complex
          becomes a map

of my existence, the pool
         trailing off to the basketball

courts whose hoops
          have long been removed,

and beyond the playground,
         the creek and tunnels

I explore on hot afternoons
         when I pack my bags

with every book I own and sit
           on the rocks until dinner.

Still a kid, I already imagine
            I live somewhere

I don’t belong, how Madonna
            must have felt before leaving

Michigan, no friends to write to
            once she was gone.  

Here, my only friend laughs
            after shoving me down

in the tall grass, my stack of books
            breaking my fall

and spreading before me
            like rumors at the bus stop.          

In my letter, I send Madonna
           a list of my favorite foods,

promise her she won’t even know
          I’m there, the same way

two girls parked below never
          see me on the roof, their lips

meeting before their eyes
          fully close.


Kerri French is the author of Every Room in the Body (Moon City Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Moon City Poetry Award. Her poetry has appeared in Washington Square Review, BOAAT, Copper Nickel, The Journal, Mid-American Review, Barrow Street, Painted Bride Quarterly, Nashville Review, DIAGRAM, PANK, Best New Poets, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. A North Carolina native, she has lived in Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and England and holds degrees from UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro, and Boston University. She lives and writes outside of Nashville, TN.

Tags: POP Lov!, Like a Prayer, Kerri French
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