Denise Duhamel

Poem in Which I’m a Dedicated Thrifter

It’s the 1980s but I love sequined poodle skirts

and bowling shirts, a varsity jacket from a school

I never attended, an imaginary football player

placing it over my shoulders to go steady.

No one goes steady anymore, but I like living

in the past, the way poems live in the past

even the ones written in present tense. I drink

from a glass tumbler embossed with bumble bees.

I eat on mismatched plates—one with a powder blue

horse and buggy scene and another with black

and white stripes. Pointy pumps, worn out

in all the wrong spots, pinch and blister my toes.

Still, I love reviving the long-ago. I may have

gone on like this forever but I finally have enough—

my last find, a fake fur swing coat,

both pockets wriggling with maggots.

Poem in Which I Revisit My Birth

I was plunked into an incubator, my funky lungs full of gunk.

I flunked the breathing test. Hunks of mucus hung from my tongue.

I howled like a drunk, a wrung-out punk.