Four-Eyed Girls
By Nancy Lee
I'm sitting at the bar
with Mary Katherine Gallagher
watching prospects grind hope
into anything blond.
I've peeled off wool tights so
my pleated skirt flashes white
cotton panties when I cross
and uncross. No one notices.
For fun, we switch eyeglasses.
In hers, I drown. Fish wriggle
and shimmer, groove beyond
my reach. She says
Through these glasses
everyone looks thinner. She says,
Why aren't there more girls
like us in movies? I tell her
there are plenty, floating
in rivers, folded in dumpsters,
naked, nameless. She says,
It's time for another shooter.
Something to clean the sink
something the bartender
will set on fire, something
that hurts going down.
Nancy Lee, "Four-Eyed Girls" from What Hurts Going Down. Copyright © 2020 by Nancy Lee. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House Canada Ltd.
Source:
What Hurts Going Down
(McClelland & Stewart, Ltd., 2020)