River City Debate and Speech Invitational

“Please”, not another rendition of “Arsenic and Old Lace”,
she thought, as she slid her emery board from the back pocket of her jeans.

She’d almost danced in the drug store when she found the pocket sized emery boards
because she believed, like her mother, in good looking nails

but they disagreed on purses. She found them pretentious
but her mother adored them.

She laid the board on her thigh while the boy and girl took their spots
in the front of the classroom and lowered their heads.

She’d start filing when they started reciting. They were performing “Plaza Suite”.
She picked the emery board up and began

with her left hand, shaping her nails to the rhythm of Neil Simon, figuring
she’d give the kids at least a point for doing something new.

**

Best Friends

We talked about Barbie dolls and sex.
You got married at sixteen, dropped out.
I went to college for 5 years, dressing
up in academics while you dealt
with a sloppy boy/husband
and worked at McDonald’s.

My mother died and you came to the funeral
in a bone, lace dress you had laid away
for your wedding. You didn’t say hello. You
called me later at my studio apartment
where my dolls dust in a box beneath my futon.
You called me from the cement steps
outside your trailer.

We talked about how our names used to rhyme
before you married, how I had been your last
friend to see your father alive. We talked.
We hung up before our conversation
reached the present.

**

I’m trying Weight Watchers

again. This time, a meeting before lunch
so I’ll go and not use the end of the day
as an excuse that—I’m tired—like I’m
tired of being fat, but not tired enough.

Next to me, a woman in a jeans
jumper talks about using all her points
to eat cheesecake and then eating nothing
else the rest of the day.

I can see her, in her car—a silver
mini-van—with one of those variety
wheels of cheesecake from Sam’s Club
on her lap, a fork in her hand.