KATHI WOLFE

HAPPY HOUR*

Seeing is a nightmare for the blind,
Uppity says, sipping a beer
at the Funhouse Pub. I must be dreaming, she thinks, a roach
is doing the breast stroke in my glass!
The bartender's nose hairs twitch.
Her polo shirt is Pepto-Bismol colored!
There goes my fantasy of romance.

A woman with smoke-stained teeth,
sits next to Uppity, punching
"what pimps read" on to her Blackberry.
Uppity looks at the ceiling to avoid
going there.

Am I getting chubby? Uppity averts
her gaze from the bar's green, moldy walls.
Am I going gray at 25? Would I kiss
anyone with zits? Or less than perfect abs?

Uppity munches pistachios, swigs more beer,
and plants her red stilettos firmly on the ground.
Seeing isn't for the faint of heart, she says,
I'm not ready for my close-up .

A PULP FICTION

All those lesbians you pal around with will lead into a blind alley, her grandmother told Uppity. For the love of Sappho, Uppity thought, slipping on her red shoes, take me there! Bring me to this dyke-infested place where sapphic ghosts kiss blindly in devil-encrusted bliss. And forbidden fruit ripens, like kudzu on the vine. Let me caress the shattered stone. My cane, a dagger, will slash the heart of my ex who left me standing alone on the street after the midnight show of Wait Until Dark. In a blind passion, my hands will stalk the crumbling wall! Looking for unrequited love. Like a sightless idiot, believing that it can be found.

*"Happy Hour"and "A Pulp Fiction" are both from the Uppity Blind Girl poems.

Kathi Wolfe was a finalist in the 2007 Pudding House Press chapbook competition. Her chapbook Helen Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems was published by Pudding House in 2008. Wolfe's work has appeared in Gargoyle, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Wordgathering, Innisfree Poetry Journal and other publications. A recipient of a Puffin Foundation Grant, she has read at the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon series and appeared on the public radio show "The Poet and the Poem." Wolfe is a columnist/senior writer for Scene4, an arts and media magazine and a contributor to The Washington Blade. She is a Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer.