Member Poem

I sweat in a crowded bar with lots of chairs—chairs to sit on,
chairs to stand on, stunt chairs to throw against plywood walls.
I’m in my thirties again, single, in tight indigo jeans. My hair
thick again—a ponytail of auburn frizz. Australian cowboys arrive
in jumbo pickups with roof lights. They look like Texans with worse
teeth and kinder smiles. I fantasize they will teach me the two-step.
I’ll become a competition dancer who double spins the turns.
Which never happens.
Instead, I pay twenty bucks to enter the chair-breaking contest.
Cowboys shout tips—”lift high! put your back in it!”—but I only dent
a leg. Why won’t my own imagination deliver what I want? A slam dunk
crash against the stairs, arms and legs flying into the ceiling fan.

Published in Unbroken