Shade

Rock star,
drug addict,
or geriatric on the rebound from cataract surgery,
she said,
are the only legitimate personas for sunglass-wearing.

But what about style and flirtation and Jackie O?

What about beaches
and tan lines
and ocean-stained copies of Time?

What about adolescence
and wrinkled hot dogs
and the velvety shores of Jersey?

Do you have an opinion on the grammatically stunted drugstore novel
or the vulgarity of toe rings?

What of that sapphire swimsuit that’s missing three jewels
and chapped lips
and that obscene practice permissible only after achieving a stupefied state of tourism (long after fanny packs and card decks) known as bike-renting?

Seriously, Mother, what do you make of chuckling quietly at women
whose shrunken, upturned noses can’t support their aviators,
or that psychedelic rainbow emitted by misshapen lenses,
rivaled only by oil leaks in the parking lots of supermarkets?

Nonsense. UV rays are fictionalized by the same people
who invented evolution and
global warming
and NASA.

No daughter of mine shall subscribe to that mongering,
that hullabaloo.
You’ll just have to squint.

But when she turned, I shaded my rusty eyes anyway,
if for no other reason than to shield myself for a little while against that blinding
light source
called humanity.