SoMa Literary Review - 35th Avenue Ladybug

35th Avenue Ladybug

By Jan Steckel

Ladybug, ladybug,
go fly away home.
Your house is on fire,
and the whole neighborhood
has turned out to watch.
The popsicle guy is rolling
his Delicias de Michoacan cart over.
They're selling refrescos
and chicharrones
on the pavement outside,
cuz this is East Oakland, bug!
Who knows when the fuck
that fire truck
is ever gonna arrive?

Jan Steckel is an Oakland, California writer whose poetry and fiction have appeared recently in Lodestar Quarterly, BorderSenses and the HarperSF anthology WomanPrayers. She is working on a collection of interrelated short stories, four of which have appeared in print in Margin, Yale Medicine, So to Speak and Flashquake. Her poetry chapbook, The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press), comes out in 2006. You can find more of her work at www.jansteckel.com.