Deception

Susan Fuchtman

source: BLNDN

Everyone knows you don’t dress for yourself
but for your father or against your father (you
roll up your skirt after turning the corner)
& for the boy who necks with you in the garage
after school, the garage that used to be a beauty
shop, the boy who pays your sister a quarter not
to tell your parents he was there, the sister you’re
supposed to watch until they get home,
the beautiful sister with Farrah Fawcett hair
who didn’t finish high school & had
six children by three different men,
Beautiful children. 

Hardly anyone knows there are women in far
Western Kansas living in renovated remote
sod houses, homesteaded walls six feet thick
—many of these Plains women
are beauty-queen beautiful, many are sisters
(so be careful what you say) & somehow,
in those small towns where everyone
knows everything, their husbands
have affairs. 

You know it hurts to be beautiful—
your Dad said so when Mom was combing
tangles from your hair, Dad said a lot of things,
like Mom’s butt was flat from tipping back
so often, he said this with raised eyebrows & a laugh
as he flicked cigar ash on the ground, Mom laughed
too, Mom who bought him Playboys on family 
vacations and stacked library books about
impotence on the kitchen counter. 

The Bible says charm is deceptive, and beauty is
fleeting— you didn’t know you were beautiful before
it fled, you didn’t know those quarters prostituted
your kisses, you sold your beauty all your life then
one day your soft face sags in the blue-white light,
your hair dull like a t-shirt laundered too many
times, your breasts hang heavy
on the fat of your belly,
beautiful.

Susan Fuchtman writes poetry, creative non-fiction, and short stories. Her recent and forthcoming work can be found in Plume, Emerge, Flights, Punchnel’s, Stonecrop Review, Stone of Madness, Pandemic Poetry Anthology, Pangyrus, and Reckon Review. She currently resides in Chicago, Illinois and Iowa City, Iowa. @susanfuchtman