80spoems/2women

Two women walked in the bar on lower Broadway in the-middle of the afternoon. It was Wednesday. One was a blonde. The other, a brunette, ordered a little something she called no outside employment. The blonde ordered a rich man. They sat in their usual booth, the one with the 40’s poster, a dishwater blonde in a see-through nightie quipping, “He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink. I don’t know what I’ll do to amuse him.” She peered up through the three layers of lacquer and posed the question over and over.

The blonde and the brunette, both artists, both feminists, came here on Wednesdays. They came here often on a Thursday too. It was not unheard of to find them here on a Tuesday, or uncommon on a Monday . It was.their right in the afternoon. It was done when necessary in the morning. It was an obligation on Friday after work

The bar was filled with federal agents, but they sat on the opposite side of the room, which was divided by streams of light. The feminists used these glistening bands to pretend they were living inside a bar-room lamp trailing through watery, their careers making meteoric leaps. The federal agents, on the other hand, interpreted the trails of light as bars. They avoided the tables with posters of naked women. They sat at the long, black bar, in three-piece suits and only drank during happy hour. They ordered Scotch and water, gin with a twist; double Manhattans on Friday. The federal agents worked in the offices surrounding the federal building cafeteria. They ate cheap lunches.

A blonde and a brunette in a bar on lower Broadway in the middle of the afternoon, working in an office with cockroaches, for minimum wage. They took long lunches, ordered no outside employment and a rich man, at full price/ hung around for happy hour to complain about hard cheese and crackers without butter. They lit two cigarettes. They chain smoked. They talked constantly, neither of them listening to the other.

Two women walked in a bar on lower Broadway. The blonde said her father invented the slogan “Let your fingers do the walking.” The brunette made a trail through the words on the poster and said the only thing her father invented was her. They laughed. They were both artists, both feminist, both desperate. They both believed in art. They both believed in language. They both believed in images. They both believed in love. They both believed in destiny. They both believed in justice. They both believed in women. They both believed in meteors.

Two artists in a dark bar on lower Broadway ordering no outside employment and a rich man. The brunette peered up through her third and asked if the Peking Opera had left town yet. They both laughed. They both threatened to take a year off. They both threatened to do their lives. They both threatened to leave their lovers. They both threatened to drink themselves into a meteoric rise in their careers. They both threatened the hard cheese. They both threatened the lack of knives.

The blonde told the brunette she was the only true romantic she knew. The brunette gave her a complete dissection of the nature of romance. They were both feminists in a dark bar on lower Broadway on a Wednesday afternoon. They were both desperate. Outside two women were working for a living. One wore braids. The other had her hair cropped short. One had slits in her skirt. The other wore pants. The one with cropped hair asked a sailor if he wanted a date. He said, “Sure.” Inside the federal agents complained that they always had to pay. “In the Mood” was on the jukebox. The blonde said she wasn’t getting any. The brunette said any what.

Two feminists walked into a dark bar on lower Broadway in the middle of the afternoon. They were both romantics. They both believed in justice. The blonde looked out through her fourth and asked if the Peking Opera had left town yet. They both laughed. They were both desperate. They were both in love. They were both artists. They were both feminists. They were both in the dark bar on lower Broadway on a Wednesday afternoon. They both believed in destiny. They both believed in meteors.