Until twenty I was just another hairnet,
my hands part of the great machinery
like a congress of sparrows, a dynamo
powered by gossip and wintergreen.
Every bearing was sticky as an old lip.
Many of the ladies on the lifetime plan
considered me inferior, gawked evil
as I unfolded the waxed paper around
my egg sandwich. Did they know rich
people had the same problems that we
did, only larger? Half the moon pies
we packaged that night would perish
before they made it to a banishment
of incisors. In private, I drafted pages
of an historical thriller, pictured
its cover in a vat of undulating paste
that occasionally resembled blue veins
pinwheeling a breast. The lifers
had at least one jail boyfriend, one
free boyfriend, and sometimes both
would approach the back dock,
smoking thin cigarettes or chewing
pistachio shells like ammunition.
Those nights I was just the floor girl.
A pair of gloves balled up on a shelf.
Two floury footprints out the door.
- Review of Olena Kalytiak Davis’s The Poem She Didn’t Write and Other Poems - June 1, 2015
- I Was on the Line - March 17, 2015
- Two Poems - September 16, 2014
