"a song in the front yard'

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.   

A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now   

And maybe down the alley,

To where the charity children play.   

I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine

How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.   

My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae   

Will grow up to be a bad woman.

That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late

(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.

And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace   

And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

 

There are a few things that interest me about this poem. Like first off, why a "song" in the front yard. I'm especially intrigued because of the innocence that I connote with "song", while she says that it's the backyard where the children play. This is connected to the evolution of imagery in the poem as well. At first we just get the feeling of a child playing, literally. This girl wants to go explore the backyard, where it's a little more exciting and unkempt. Typically our neighbors won't see the backyard, so that's were we may let it slip a little bit. But suddenly there's this change where the backyard no longer represents an area  a child would play in, but instead represents a shift in attitude as one grows older. It becomes the gossip, the hush-hush and raunchiness of our time. She goes from wanting to play amongst the weeds to putting on the makeup and going out for the night to do... who knows what. She comments on the development of play throughout our lives; it's always there, but apparently just changes in its purity.