Shekels

As devastated as the Queen of Tunis in
Bloomingdales who was just informed
the Jimmy Choo silver sandals she wanted
don’t come in her size, her doughy arms

flapping in a thousand diabetic directions,
the fleshy folds of her lips smeared in
mercuric sulfide as blinding as convex
reflectors.
.
All the while, Mother Pearl, her eyeballs
rollercoasting, her ashen hands puffed
up like polar bear paws to aid in efficient
panhandling, pleads, “People, don’t give

me no flat coppers; what the fuck I gonna
do with those?

***

Olivia Grayson creates prose and poetry that combine pop culture with autobiography in an effort to explore the often times startling experience of being part of the family of women —alternatively thrust into, or dumbly participating with a culture that sells the promise of absolute beauty, sparkling romance, and ideal interventions; she finds herself writing from a tension that surrounds this system.

She is the author of the chapbooks, Cat Lament, Being Female, and her work has appeared in BlazeVox, Boog City, Fog Machine, Grief Diaries, The Harpoon Review, and others.