My Hipster   

                                                                                                by Barbara Rockman

wants her marrow to shine.

Once, scab-kneed and miraculous, she

flew her Schwinn downhill, looping potholes––

barrel racer of the cul-de-sac. Optimism

in neon leggings. Head stand and cartwheel,

witch and pirate. Till the bill of goods arrived.

She ripped its wrapping.

Then and there her insteps snapped,

hips slimmed to no womanly good.

She stilettos the runway, breastless,

famished. My urban blood and bone

is out till dawn, done up and done in

by two boys who compare her: fuck you.

She writes a poem on the train,

Desire is a vintage gown cut on the bias.

Every flaw riots a girl’s good nature,

twists a waif’s waist till it’s knotted laundry

dragged down the alley of ice she slips on.

She is that beautiful,

thread of snivel coating her lips,

all her filthy stuff rumpling her like storm.

She counts stars, flat on her back in the wish-I-might.

* * * * *

"My Hipster" was first published in WomenArtsQuarterly and is now in Barbara Rockman's collection to cleave.

Barbara Rockman is the author of Sting and Nest, winner of the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, and to cleave (University of New Mexico Press, 2019). She teaches writing at Santa Fe Community College and at Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families. Raised in western Massachusetts, she now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.