Poem for Peri-Menopausal Women

I’m like a birch tree in the naked white of winter.
The birch that autocorrect first changed to bitch then butch.

I’m shedding layers of black and white paper and ash.
Newspapers have never been more alive or dead,

as I silence my phone and turn to
phonographs, still photography, and vinyl.

Here I find comfort,
among the old, the dusty, the musty, and familiar—the 1880s

and the 1980s
the granny panties and overwhelming old French perfumes.

Here I crank up the heady rose,
the saccharine violet, the languid linden blossom,

resurrect the pink fluorescent
of my faded electric youth.

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Nicole Tallman is the Poetry Ambassador for Miami-Dade County, Associate Editor for South Florida Poetry Journal, and Interviews Editor for The Blue Mountain Review. She is the author of the hybrid prose-poetry chapbook Something Kindred (The Southern Collective Experience Press), and her debut full-length book is forthcoming in the summer. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @natallman and at nicoletallman.com.