Because she did such terrible things to them
with her sexiness and long, sauntering stride
and how she smiled and didn't avoid their eyes
but came right back with remarks of her own,
because day and night she wronged and injured them
with her height and olive skin and heavy jugs
 — Madonna mia! — and the creeps she walked
around with but never walked with one of them,
because anyone could see her innocence,
that having no women's tricks, what she had
to defend herself from all the guys who came
poking and pushing at her was craziness,
yelling out dirty words to hurt their hearing
and dressing herself up crazy and dumb
 — because of this the hard guys from Cherry Street,
they were the ones who busted into her flat
and pulled her boyfriend off her, worked him over,
broke his nose and chipped two teeth.
                                       And then because,
naked, bronze, tall, she stood there and never tried
to cover up while she yelled to let him go,
because of that they crapped all over the place,
they threw her underwear around and stomped it
 — to tell her how she had confused and hurt them — 
then, at wits' end, beat themselves off and scrammed,
having laid the tribute of their tantrum at
the altar of her high and white and double bed.