Ann Hudson: “Lockdown, Menopause”
LOCKDOWN, MENOPAUSE
Maybe it’s stress. Or maybe my last egg
dropped fifty days ago like the last quarter
in the coin slot at the 7-11 where the bus
deposited us after school, where Dudley,
the gently-mustached clerk thumbing through
his Car and Driver at the register, barely
glanced up to greet us as we sauntered in,
grabbed the last pack of grape Big League Chew,
flipped through Playboys, made sand art
with the Slurpee machine, or beelined
for Ms. Pacman, the last in line usually leaning
across the pinball machine to watch, absent-
mindedly fumbling with the buttons, ignoring
the lit-up girls encouraging us to play-play-play,
the flippers flip-flip-flipping in that dead air,
not making contact with anything.
Ann Hudson is the author of The Armillary Sphere (Ohio University Press) and Glow (Next Page Press), a chapbook on radium. Her poems have appeared in Cider Press Review, Orion, Crab Orchard Review, Colorado Review, North American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. She is a senior editor for Rhino.