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I would love to hear from you. Please contact me at: adamdfisher@optonline.net |
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HER
DAY DREAM a
faded-green nylon bag holding dirty socks, jeans
(size 1), tee shirts, towels, sheets. She
is thin, boyish, limp blond
hair, brown eyes, buys
a pack of gum at
the news stand looks
in the window of
the beauty parlor, passes
Starlight Bar and Grill, who’d
refused her— underage,
didn’t have proof— no
driver’s license. She
puts whites in one washer, colors
in another, sits on a torn red
vinyl seat, reads a
movie magazine eight
months old, wonders
about stars’ lives not a
two room walk-up,
but being somebody, not
sewing at Triumph Trimmings where
she’s assaulted by
steam vents, diesel fumes, solvent
vapors in the low cinder block
building where the entrance is a
rusted door that doesn’t quite
close and where she punches the
time clock in the dingy hall,
goes to her station where the foreman is
tapping his foot, looking at
his watch, "Five minutes late—I’ll dock
you—get with it girl.” Some
of the workers wear dust
masks; she coughs brown phlegm; says
she won’t be there long
enough to matter, won’t be a
fifty-year-old “girl” sewing
trimmings at minimum wage.
When the washer stops
she stuffs her things in a
dryer, wanders out
to Borgeen’s Diner, sits
at the counter looking at
her coffee-cup reflection, where
a well dressed man asks directions
to looks
at her, “Pardon me…my card... Bill
Braxton, Reeves Agency. You have the
look we want.” Dawn
looks up from divining her
tepid coffee, trudges
out to fold her laundry. |