USA

bbates+@pitt.edu

Not This Life
If the shoe doesn't fit, why change the foot?
Gloria Steinem

Sonny Falbo's arm straddles the seat
as he backs up for another girl to pack
his big finned car for the ride around town.
I'm sixteen, stretched into stilettos,
the gold lamé top, the chantung skirt,
hoping he'll ride me around with all the other girls
while Bobby Vinton croons Blue Velvet..
I've perfumed my lobes with Wind Song,
just in case we get close enough to . . . .

In college, I scoffed stuffy clothes,
a cloche over cropped curls, glen plaid suits,
turned my back on sororities,
wore a patch of the flag on my jeans
drank scotch with guys who had a little bottle in the sack.
I shucked those prim white gloves
for a gown peeling from my shoulders,
practiced a fall into the arms of Warren Beatty
like Natalie Wood in Splendor.

It wasn't the engineer in Drum Corps
who wore the kilt and glinted at me,
but the soldier in the Rotsy garb
who carried a gun and pressed me against the stacks
nights I worked at the library
for pennies I'd spend on lucite spikes
that held my feet like roses on ice.

When he was off at Nam, I traded him
for the driver at the stables
who spurred his horse, showing off like Eastwood,
a stogie gritted between his teeth.
pulling hard on the bit, legs rigid, cocky with control
at the mare braying beneath him.

I finally took the safe one from the naval base,
his nose a long glide from a shiny bridge.
I never knew at 42 he'd go mad, run off to Florida,
shoot flamingoes in the park.
When they carried him away,
I joined women's groups taking back the night,
Steinem marches to porno shops on Times Square
where men drooled over women trapped behind the glass.

At this age, I've taken to my solitary life,
tucked into Schwab accounts for a future alone.
I've given up those sultry espadrilles
winding around bare ankles, my feet apart
in that dare-me-to-dance pose.
I much prefer to brave the beach in a simple robe,
the arch of my foot meeting the sand, where some
molted creature scurries from an abandoned shell
like the life I've stepped away from.

Publication Credit: in The Paterson Literary Review

It's a Stretch

She's worked hard, this second wife,
stretching her hair like younger women,
feigning that fresh-from-the-shower,
tousled look of someone half her age.
She's flexed her legs into short shorts
that barely cover that one veiny patch
just under the cuff, cropped her socks
into bare ankles, where his love chain
nibbles at the bone of feet she
polishes with pumice every night.

After step aerobics, the soloflex, skipping
dinners when he's away, she drops
another five, stretching her skin onto a frame
with definition, a stomach hard as armadillo
plates. At parties, her shoulder thins
to a shield, fending off cuties the clients bring
for show, ones who laugh at his witty jokes
as she scans the room of ingenues
waiting turns as wives of older men who
wield a gavel, roll an overnight buck
into Nasdaq fortunes.

Pretty soon, her childless days will fill
with joint custody visits from his kids,
camping weekends under mosquito nets
and soggy blankets, her working days
into payments on a skiff they sail
to islands no one's ever heard of.
There she won't resist the goose liver
squeezed in pastry puffs, sherried veal
in chestnut sauce, bottles of Montrachet
quaffed with figs in cream.

And when he's finished stuffing her,
he'll one day pat her tummy, grumble
at her packed-on pounds, turn his head
to younger, trimmer models, as her name
fades from the boat side, licked by
salty waves she's ridden all along.

© All Copyright, Marilyn Bates.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.