Perfumed Girl on Foot

       —after Ruth Orkin’s photo “American Girl in Italy, 1951”

             by Susan Stevens


My god, I’m outnumbered again on this street, where men have nothing better to do 
than whistle, jeer, or train their eyes on what they think is me. Did their mothers 
train them to hang around like frustrated jackals? I’ve seldom seen women who look 
this bored or dispossessed of industry. Most of these guys wouldn’t deign to buy 
me dinner back home at Mama Leone’s—yet they squander their minds in melancholic 
lust that frankly leaves me cold.

What if I were to go with one of them? Would his Italianate songs be any less static 
than those of any man I’ve been displeased to know? Let me walk through this colorless 
menagerie without incident, without invective, without laughing in their bloody faces.