I want Wonder Woman on the top
of the spinner rack at the Rex-All Drugs.
I've just turned thirteen and am being weaned
away from comic books and onto girls.
The Amazon Princess is a good pick
--she's just bare enough to be still decent,
and she wears red, white, and blue, the colors
of the flag, and I still love my country
even though it's 1969 and
we're destroying the Vietnamese yet
still losing the war, but nobody wants
to admit that yet, least of all Nixon.
I've got a crush on one of his daughters
so he can't be all bad. But I can't reach
her, Wonder Woman, I mean, even on
tiptoe. I'm about six inches short. So

I ask the lady who's got her hands on
a soap opera magazine to pull
the comic down for me. Sure thing, baby,
she says. Which one? Wonder Woman, I say
--my voice hasn't quite become a man's yet,
and this lady's is deeper, and as she
raises her right arm I can see some breast
to the right of her arm pit. I'm glad it's
shaved. She snags the thing,

the comic, and pulls it down. Nice
hair, she says--she means Wonder Woman's. Her
outfit's cute, she adds. Here you go, Sweetie
--she hands her to me. Thank you, ma'am, I say,
but it's more of a whine. I love you, ma'am,

I want to say, but don't. She's turned away.
I reckon I'll never see her again,
but I think that we've shared something special,
though I'm too young, and go to public school,
and watch too much TV to understand,
and my first nervous breakdown is still three
decades away. But I don't know that then
--or maybe I do: for someone's who's just

in seventh grade, I do wonder a lot,
especially why life doesn't make sense
and God doesn't seem to care about what
a mess we've made of it and why the gals
dress up so pretty just to ignore me.

Wonder Woman has a magic lasso
--if it encircles you, you're in her power,
there's no escape, and you must obey her
and come clean if she commands you to do so.
That's only in the comic. But evil
does what she tells it to and so would I.

Wonder Woman
isn't even real--Chester Gould made her
up so she's even better than that but
if I can't even get a girl my age
what chance do I have with her?