The Pierced Convenience Store Clerk

by Victor Kulkosky

From her chubby chin
and above her eyes,
little silver balls,
planted in her skin,
shot glints of overhead light.

I might've asked why she does the job
her taunters used to do,
but figured she'd mutter about free choice.

Should I have said, to open up:
"I see you like the blues --
you know, on the radio there?"
or
"Tell me, do they hurt?"
or
"Why the eyebrows, pray tell?"

Before I even saw them,
a hundred questions came and went,
between the Diet Pepsi in my hand
and the three pennies of change
sliding past her chewed-up nails,
but I didn't ask even one
and drove off thinking,
"Nah, it's wasted effort
trying to penetrate the young."

Now me, I don't pretend
to have no wounds,
but it matters a lot
who shares my blood.
Or did I miss it, her badge of honor,
declaring, "I'm wounded, and still I walk."

And I conceived a catalog
of how we wear our wounds.
Maybe louder times
call for louder wounds,
before anyone will listen.

-- VK
Victor Kulkosky

Victor Kulkosky has never pierced anything on purpose and never will, but doesn't care if you do. He is a freelance journalist on the cusp of middle age, married with one son and raising a (so far unpierced) niece. He's been writing poetry since his long-ago youth but only recently pierced his inhibitions and began submitting. His poetic idols include Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas, William Carlos Williams and Shakespeare. He enters the University of Georgia Graduate School in journalism in the fall.