Soliloquy of a Discarded Inflatable Lady

by Alicia Potee

Listen. I was born from a plastic bag, pimped to life by a long pump of mechanical breath. Like you, but go ahead and think you’re better — than this rubber body, these double-dip breasts, vinyl hips and dummy thighs, banana sundae split, lips two fat cherries on top. Look how you’re stooped over slab, streetlight autopsists, snapping shots for laughs. Whose husband

left you like this? My sapphire spider eyes won’t snitch. If names are punchlines, just know they called me Judy. Do with that what you will.

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Alicia Potee is a 2002 graduate of St. John’s College in Annapolis and a current MFA candidate at the University of Baltimore. Her poems have appeared in BRUISER, Chestnut Review, Comstock Review, Hawaii-Pacific Review, Little Patuxent Review, and Baltimore Review, among other places. She lives in Towson, MD with her tiny zoo of children and pets.