Things were not free back then, in 1973, but they were nearly free, cheap but good, easy to find, colorful, abundant. You could leave a quarter in a can on the roadside and take a bunch of flowers set in jam jars, or grab a handful of berries, picked fresh. You could rent a two-bedroom apartment for 50 dollars a month, no extra charge for a dog, or railroad cat. For 15 cents, hand made tortillas were wrapped in thin tin foil with a pat of butter or a wedge of cheese folded in the center. The left headlight was shot, the grill held together with rope and electrical tape. We picked seeds from our teeth with a matchbook cover from the restaurant we worked in nights and weekends until it frayed and lost its edge. I pointed at the cows. Patricia drowsed. We were as close to free as we could get.
Acknowledgments and Notes
Copyright © 2012 by Dorianne Laux
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-937693-27-5 (e-book edition)
ISBN 978-1-937693-04-6 (print edition)
Acknowledgments:
“Music My Rampart,” Pebble Lake Review
Dolly’s Breasts, American Poetry Review
Nearly Free, SmokeLong Quarterly
Woman in a Bar, SmokeLong Quarterly
Secondhand Coat, BLIP Magazine
Waitress, BLIP Magazine
The Year of My Hair, Green Mountains Moving
Black She-Snake Speaks, MacGuffin
Note: “Music My Rampart” is a phrase from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven.”
Illustration: “The Shape of Things to Come” by Joshua Flint
Proofreader: Tim McBride
Originally printed as a chapbook in an edition limited to 200 copies
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Table of Contents
Red Dragonfly Press E-book Editions
Waitress
Woman in a Bar
She
Secondhand Coat
Black She-Snake Speaks
Menstruation/Menopause
The Year of My Hair
Dolly’s Breasts
“Music My Rampart”
Nearly Free
Acknowledgments and Notes
The Book of Women Page 2