Poems by Karen Weyant

She Likes to Work Graveyard

She knows that the truck driver at the counter

wants the pot rot, the thick pool of crusted

coffee that's been sitting for hours.

She waits on the women off second shift

at M&C Parts, their Ladies Night

a quick bite of apple pie and a few sips

of Just water, please. She serves the college boys

who wander in after the local bars' last calls,

balances three plates on her left arm,

pours drinks with her right. In the lull

after three, she finds crumbs clinging

to the crook of her arm, maple syrup

sticking to the thin strands of hair smeared

across her forehead. She listens to Joey sing

That's Amore as he bakes for the day, swears

she finds missing verses tucked in the backroom

every off-note key lodged in the wire racks

with the containers of blue cheese,

the jars of mild pepper rings and dill pickles.

When she leaves, she collects

the splinter moons, brown rings left

on dollar bill tips from chipped coffee cups,

the thin slice of the night's remnants

she can see in the rearview mirror of her car.

Because We Wore Camouflage Before We Wore Miniskirts

We knew leaves and twigs first as a polyester-cotton blend coat

or a brother's hunting cap that fell to the brim of our noses.

We understood dawn on the first day of doe as ritual,

watched our brothers and uncles and fathers check their rifles,

their scopes, leave the house cursing the cold, but blessing the snow.

We made our own guns from broomsticks, binoculars

from toilet paper rolls. We pulled invisible triggers,

pretended that the kick-back would bruise the soft skin

below our collarbones, above the place where our breasts

would soon be. We covered our face with green eyeshadow

and black mascara, pulled our hair back in tight braids.

We made makeshift tents from bedsheets,

used the top bunk as a tree stand. Our fingers never shook,

our aim perfect, our targets never sprang away.

We grew up, found lipstick and gold bracelets,

wore our t-shirts and jeans tight, forgot how we once

wanted to blend in with the boys. Until that day we saw

the girl wearing camouflage as a short skirt,

dark patches riding up her thighs, the green

catching the highlights in her eyes, and we remembered

those cold November days when our mothers

found us huddled in our own bedroom hunting camps,

our lips tightening around whispers,

I'm hiding, can't you see that I'm hiding?

The Dirt Sisters

Because we were the only two girls

in a neighborhood filled with boys,

we abandoned the little league fields

to play in the old strip mines above

Toby Creek. With every climb,

we strived for traction. Slipping,

sneakers sliding, we fell, broken pieces

of shale pierced the ground, split

open our skin. At the top, we yelled

Queen of the Mountain, sure

We wanted to rule a kingdom of scraped land

and thin tufts of yellowed grass.

We staked our claim, scratched our names

in the dirt, became blood sisters with a sharp poke

and two gritty fingers pressed together.

You were the leader, never minding

how dust lined soaked your ankles, how

a thin cloud of dust circled your head

like a halo, how you swiped your pricked finger

against the thighs of your jeans,

the red a rust streak soaked to your thighs.

At home, My mother sighed, spit

on a dish towel, wiped my face.

There's a beautiful young lady underneath

all this, she said. I never said out loud

that I wasn't so sure.

Karen J. Weyant's work can be seen in 5AM, the Barn Owl Review, Cave Wall, The Fiddleback, Flyway, Copper Nickel and River Styx. Her first chapbook Stealing Dust was published in 2009 by Finishing Line Press, and her second chapbook, Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt won Main Street Rag's 2011 Chapbook Contest and will be published in 2012. In 2007, she was awarded a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She now lives and writes in Warren, Pennsylvania, but teaches at Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, New York.