BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

To my so-called friends who left Sunday's poetry reading in the middle of my first poem, The Rusty Anvil--I forgive you. Sure, the only thing between me and a hostile audience was my cigarette holder. There's probably nothing you could have done to stop an angry mob from pelting me with carob muffins. (I used Bluzz on my parrot shirt and most of the stains came out.)

At least now I know who my real friends are. They have fur and make noises like arf. In fact, I'm going to ask Deirdre to allow animals to come to the poetry slams. Better yet, maybe I'll move to Dallas where a team of poets won second place in the National Poetry Slam. Dallas is an artsy place where the muse is not abused. A poet in Axel is appreciated about as much as an abscessed tooth. A case of diphtheria. A rabid squirrel. Like a foolish court jester, I plowed ahead with my verse, hoping to make a name for myself equal to the great poets of yore--Alexander Pope, McKuen, etc.

Thank goodness my talent is a gushing spring, a font from whence iambic pentameter squirts by the gallon. My precious puddle is obviously wasted on you.

When you left tonight, I consoled myself with the notion you were on the parking lot planning a tribute of some sort. "They're composing a poem," I thought, as I read Springtime at Goat Head Mall. "Something about blond, busty, knows a bargain. I hope I don't cry."

By the time I read my third poem, the one about the Shetland pony, I was wracked by doubt. "They've found out about the gushy love sonnet I wrote to Monkee Davy Jones in junior high. They've heard how I locked myself in the Principal Shaw's office and recited it over the p.a. How I spent a year in reform school." (Every great poet fears such discoveries.)

As I read my poem about Princess Di, recalling the pomp and circumstance of her life, I returned to my fantasy. "Maybe they will break into my house and surprise me--take me to brunch in Wichita Falls." As I pen this, I'm lying in bed in my Easter dress. (Remember? Red polka dots? Clown buttons?) My Zsa Zsa Gabor wig is on the night stand, just in case.

Even if you don't take me to Wichita Falls, I'll be prepared. Perhaps you've planned an even more glorious tribute. "I always sleep like this," I'll say when you wake me at dawn and whisk me away on a float decorated with our state flower--the bluebonnet--made out of tissue paper, since it would be against the law to use real ones. You're proud that I'm a Texan, even though you didn't stay to hear my poem about the Alamo.

Alas, when it became apparent you were never returning to the coffee house, I couldn't help worrying that something horrible had happened. "Is Fernando having a gas attack? Have Camille's stitches come undone?" I was sick with fear. When I read the poem about Mt. St. Helens, it hit me. "There's probably been an explosion and Camille, Brandi and Fernando are in the emergency room!" I saw you swathed in bandages, your arms broken, unable to pick up a phone.

One of the two remaining people in the audience saw how distraught I was. He brought me a chocolate chip cookie and called the hospital. When he told me you weren't there, I was really pissed.

I kept wondering, "Why? Why? Why would my friends betray me like this?" (Even thought I know you've been eaten up with jealousy ever since my poem Wrestling Naked was published in Ode to Grecian Formula.) And to think I went to your demolition derby, your dance recitals, listened to your pathetic barbershop quartet!

When I said you were good I was lying.

So this is how you repay my devotion. Why don't you just take a knife and stab me? At least I would not suffer public humiliation again.

Do you hate my parrot shirt or what?