Ann Howells is a longtime member of Dallas Poets Community, a 501-(c )-3 literary non-profit. She currently serves on its board and edits its semi-annual poetry journal, Illya's Honey. Her work appears in various small press and university journals, most recently: Avocet, Barbaric Yawp, Third Wednesday and Main Channel Voices. Her chapbook, Black Crow in Flight, is available from Main Street Rag Press.

Bukowski Contest Winner!

pantyhose (After Bukowski's 'the shoelace') (October 20, 2009. Issue 10.)

a crying child, a
broken nail, a moldy
shower, a debt, bills
stacked on the kitchen counter, stacked
so high you see them teeter
like a skyscraper in the wind …
it’s not catastrophe
that breaks a woman’s back
dying you’re prepared for, beatings,
divorce, house fire, earthquake, childbirth …
no, it’s niggling
trivialities
not the compound fracture
but the pantyhose that run
just before the interview piddly things
that bite like blackflies
that strip away flesh and will not be
dispersed—overdue books or car inspections
or telemarketers, or keys lost
or mouse droppings found, or cramps
breasts too tender to touch
water in the basement and squirrels,
you hope, in the attic and not a damn flower
in the lawn, except dandelions
it’s always rats or gnats or fleas or bees or
spiders or crickets or
red wine spilled on the white sofa, and
you’re out of toilet paper, or
out of luck or too much luck,
all bad,
the mattress sags, chair cushion spills
it’s guts the president’s a moron and
your boss is a letch

smoke detector beeps
all night, toilet’s clogged, milk’s curdled,
$450 for a new dryer, delivery
and installation from J.C. Penney’s
bank says you’re overdrawn, again
your temperature’s up and the chips are
down and the dog gnawed the heel off your
favorite pumps, and everything
everything is too heavy—
your purse, your workload, your weight
and your heart:
it’s heavy as hell and twice as
threatening.
every time you sneeze your bladder leaks
and people demand you volunteer there’s that
and there’s spam, VDs & DVDs;
non-alcohol beer, three month droughts,
$3.00 gasoline
and green
catsup

or getting by
at a convenience store on the midnight shift
or working day care or selling
door-to-door or mucking stables or
car-jacking young executives
breaking their heads and leaving them
vegetables
at the age of 27

suddenly
a pounding in the middle of the night
and a suspicious mole
on your belly, carpal tunnel getting worse,
and it’s $60 for a brace, $14,000 for surgery,
and Korea and Afghanistan and right here at home, and
tight jeans and baggy jeans and
no jeans allowed and make-up
and bare face, and plenty of plastic but no glass,
except the one you hate to peer into and perhaps
a shard to cut your
wrists.

and with every pair of ruined panty hose
out of hundreds, thousands, millions of pairs
one girl, one woman,
one person’s
back is broken.