Poetry by Charlie Zender

1

Missing Spanish Chicks
Foxy Spanish chicks roost here trustworthy guidebooks claim, Instead cold children crowd the squares with chattery Spanish names Merchants comfortable on Winter's bottoms smoke wrinkled cigarettes When real girls disappear, el Policia interrogate men they've met Mistress wives' alibis they'd buy except the Wintry matriarch's Whose sodden Spanish Spring staggered in sometime too late in March

Cap de Creus, Catalonia, Spain and Balboa Peninsula, California April­June, 2004