Vicki Iorio: The Biography of Love

I love Bambi
when a hunter shoots Bambi’s mother
I hide under the seat until the movie ends

My mother holds me
whispers she’ll never leave
I don’t know that love is my mother

I only know her perfume     her red lips     her cigarettes
are my home

I am in love with Ricky Nelson’s white teeth
Dion’s Bronx accent     Chubby Checker’s twist
Ponderosa’s Little Joe     my mother calls me Boy Crazy

When the Beatles come they conquer my American heart
I shut my mother out
finger- love the Fab Four in my princess bed

A boy from the city moves into my neighborhood
we cut high school     he shows me how to roll a joint
gives me my first hickey

My mother says he’ll take his Kennedy good looks elsewhere
she’s right     my broken heart morphs into mono
mom calls me a slut with the kissing disease
I lose a school year and stay in bed with Joni Mitchel

I meet my husband in college
he never loved himself so how could he love me?

My daughter wants me to find love
signs me up on Jdate     Match     Christianmingle
gives me some blue pills in the event I find a senior with a tingle

I think I could fall for the Pope
he wouldn’t judge my love handles
but I think he is in love with God

My daughter is afraid I will die alone
she thinks she knows what love is