Jenn Blair is from Yakima, Washington. She received her PhD in Creative Writing and English from the
University of Georgia where she is currently a Park Hall Fellow. Her interests include Romantic, Victorian, and
Arab Literature. She has published in Copper Nickel, The Tusculum Review, Innisfree Journal, Sow's Ear, MELUS,
Miranda, the SNR Review, and El Jadid.
University of Georgia where she is currently a Park Hall Fellow. Her interests include Romantic, Victorian, and
Arab Literature. She has published in Copper Nickel, The Tusculum Review, Innisfree Journal, Sow's Ear, MELUS,
Miranda, the SNR Review, and El Jadid.
Jenn Blair
Ladies
We won't, I hate to reveal, be the first
to fall on the sword with our wishes
tucked in pale green envelopes inside our ribs.
That's not to say we haven't done it well.
Tearing the milkweed pods leaning
through the garden fence, playing scales,
folding father's shirts. Penning wild hopes
and aspirations in vellum covered books,
taking care not to smudge, for posterity's sake.
Picking through mice droppings to hold up
old doll clothes, little lace aprons, small velvet capes,
the white shoes with the one seed pearl on the side
that breaks the heart just so. How many volumes
must be unwritten! To remain lovely girls,
charming daughters. We undo a hundred and a half pages
a year at least (When we read a story in the paper
about three sisters in Michigan who froze to death
saving money, we nodded approvingly. No we didn't.
But we saw how it happened). The one of us
who was banished never wore stockings to church
smoked with the hired hand, and once dated two soldiers
at the same time. She would always split potluck eggs
right down the middle with terrifying precision --
gut and fill them -- place them in their respective
ceramic dimples, and then not go.
We won't, I hate to reveal, be the first
to fall on the sword with our wishes
tucked in pale green envelopes inside our ribs.
That's not to say we haven't done it well.
Tearing the milkweed pods leaning
through the garden fence, playing scales,
folding father's shirts. Penning wild hopes
and aspirations in vellum covered books,
taking care not to smudge, for posterity's sake.
Picking through mice droppings to hold up
old doll clothes, little lace aprons, small velvet capes,
the white shoes with the one seed pearl on the side
that breaks the heart just so. How many volumes
must be unwritten! To remain lovely girls,
charming daughters. We undo a hundred and a half pages
a year at least (When we read a story in the paper
about three sisters in Michigan who froze to death
saving money, we nodded approvingly. No we didn't.
But we saw how it happened). The one of us
who was banished never wore stockings to church
smoked with the hired hand, and once dated two soldiers
at the same time. She would always split potluck eggs
right down the middle with terrifying precision --
gut and fill them -- place them in their respective
ceramic dimples, and then not go.