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WINTER 2019-2020

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Vicki Iorio

A LIFETIME AWAY


Barbra spells her name like Barbra Streisand. 
Barbra and I sit cross-legged across from each other in her frilly bedroom.
It is August 1966.
Summer, as far as we are concerned, is over after July 4th.
We are playing War while listening to Under My Thumb.
A lifetime away from #metoo, we would love to be under Mick Jagger's thumb.
We discuss our Carnaby Street inspired back to school clothes.
Bess, Barbra's mother makes us tuna fish sandwiches.
We have to eat in the kitchen and try not to make crumbs.
Bess has a migraine, she makes us go outside.
The Levittown sun is hot, we walk to the playground.
The chain metal of the swings burns our palms.
The slide, a thing of torture, would rip off our thigh skin.
We are on the cusp of cramps.
We see a used tampax in the sandbox.
We talk about Tina Comma Tramp.
Tina, an older girl in vocational high school has a reputation.
A lifetime away from DNA forensics we wonder if it is Tina's tampax.
She's done it.
We wonder what it feels like.
A lifetime away from marriage, children, divorce we are just girls.
 Waiting    

Vicki Iorio is the author of Poems from the Dirty Couch, Local Gems Press and the chapbooks Send Me a Letter, dancinggirlpress and Something Fishy, Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals including The Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, poets respond on line, The Fem Lit Magazine, and The American Journal of Poetry.

 

 

 

 

 

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