My Mother Said No When I Asked for Black Fishnets

By then she was pretty much always drunk by the time I got home from school and the mall was too far by bike but Woolworth’s was close so my best friend Dina Peters and I rode our three-speeds to the Circle K first and bought a pack of Kool Menthols and smoked one out front getting lightheaded as workmen descended from their huffing pickups and eyed us before stepping inside the sealed cool interior. It was hot for April and we both wore tube tops and cut-off shorts, neither one of us had much of a bosom though my long blond hair always got a wayward glance and I’m not sure now if I bought black fishnets that day or just borrowed Dina’s, probably a hand-me-down from her older sister who had real cleavage and a boyfriend with a wolf tattoo who drove a beat-up red Camaro and never looked twice at Dina or me.

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Lisa Zimmerman’s poetry and short stories have appeared in Redbook, The Sun, Florida Review, Poet Lore, Chiron Review, Trampset, Amethyst Review, SWWIM Every Day, and other journals. Her first poetry collection won the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award. Other collections include The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press) and The Hours I Keep (Main Street Rag). Her poems have been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize. Lisa is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Northern Colorado and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.