dancing girl press, 2012
$7.00
Cathleen Allyn Conway is a poet and journalist. Her work has appeared in Bitch, Magma, Cliterature, South Bank Poetry, Full of Crow, and 3:AM Magazine. Originally from Chicago, she now lives in London, where she is working on a PhD in poetry.
*
Orange County
Morning, ten hours after arrival, light
slatted through shades like 80s sunglasses,
you unwrapped your package.
Was I not what you ordered?
Late night at a filling station in Anaheim,
trying to hand over gas money you refused,
your hand finger-picking skiffle
on the denim-ridges of my knee.
“Old Tom Waits or new Tom Waits?”
Old.
His blues beat stirs the west
coast air that steeped my lungs.
And later, in the dark,
the dark that hid orange-peel thighs,
go-faster stripes ripping across my belly,
I thought of the Observatory, the Valley,
the Hollywood sign, so surprised it wasn’t lit.
*
