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270th Weekly Poetry Contest winner: Work in Process

by Lara Dolphin

Change into your last clean bra,
the one with the janky underwire.
pull Spanx over your Thinx,
put on a power suit and grab a chocolate breakfast bar.
At the station, wait
looking up at a sky the color of the sidewalk.
In the reflection of the train’s window,
notice wrinkles around your eyes,
but because all the good plastic surgeons are out-of-network,
consider a crowdsourcing campaign for your Crow’s feet.
On the train dream of artisanally-named, CRISPR/Cas’d kids
designed to like vegetables and do well in math.
At work get along with Matt until
he shushes you in front of your boss’s boss.
Give him your trademark sloe-eyed, side eye
before heading back to your Dilbertian cubicle
to calm down with an adult coloring book.
Spend lunch rebunking the claim that a woman of a certain age
is more likely to get killed in a hoverboard accident than get married.
At the afternoon meeting, think about your loser boyfriend
at home on the couch drinking beer and pulling 360 no-scopes.
After work, hook up with Ahmed in his food truck
but not before scarfing down an order of bitter melon fries.
Give The Moroccan Paradise Grill two stars on Yelp.
Later get squiffy painting sunflowers with friends at Cocktail & Canvas.
When it’s all over, Uber home screaming for
your life as a pony-tailed grad student
auditions to be the next Stig.
Back at home, crawl under the covers,
hit RESUME WATCHING on Netflix and realize that
you get to wake up tomorrow and do it all again and
that is not nothing.
--published by Sblaam

See all the entrants to 270th Weekly Poetry Contest