APRIL 5: Ellen Goldfinch
Dorothy Parker is Missing
Dorothy Parker is missing
She said you can’t teach an old dogma
new tricks
she said don’t complain
don’t explain
she said every morning I brush my teeth
and sharpen my tongue
a woman with a sharp tongue can get in a lot of trouble
and troublesome women go missing
all the time
wit—barbs—can’t you take a joke
the next thing you know
barbed wire and prison bars
being protected whether you like it or not
Uptown bars are missing gals
like Dorothy, women with big hats
with minds as fast as race cars
women who drink dry martinis
who look a man up and down
and measure him for who he is
Dorothy once said she put all her eggs
in one bastard
and that she liked her men
handsome
ruthless and stupid
Ellen Goldfinch is a freelance writer and retired librarian/teacher of a twelfth-grade social change course. Her plays have won awards in the Ottawa Little Theatre’s Canadian One-Act Playwriting Competition, Montreal Playwrights Workshop’s Write on the Edge, and the BBC’s International Radio Drama Competition. Her short stories and poems have appeared in various publications and anthologies.