Bye-bye Miss American Pie
esmaa self
She was the world's most beautiful baby, dressed to impress at tea parties. After she battled unruly extremities in her terrible twos; she grew into a graceful Rock Star Runway Model Superwoman and stood proud upon the world stage. But her manager's insistence on an extensive rider, mixed with her acidic demands, and tarnished her image.
It is difficult to believe such pulchritude can be lost, thus fans, perhaps operating under a sort of persistence of vision, continued to pack every tour: Vietnam. Wounded Knee. El Salvador. Iraq. Fetid, charred money rolled in as patrons over-consumed her merchandise.
Eventually, Bono wrote of her:
'You were pretty as a picture
It was all there to see
Then your face caught up with your psychology.
With a mouth full of teeth
You ate all your friends
And you broke every heart thinking every heart mends...'
Has anybody here seen my old friend Miss America? Can you tell me where she's gone? She's not the country with the ugly face, the one in the corner over there looking faded and played-out, doddering before her time, is she?
Esmaa Self is a bad poet, an award winning journalist and an unpublished novelist. If you are a publisher and would like to see a manuscript about a white girl coming of age on an Indian reservation or a family saga that explores ethnic identity issues, please contact her agent, Janet Grant of Books and Such Literary Agents. Pretty please.