Open Letter to the Young Sorority Girls Who Mocked My Beard

I saw you

cup your mouths

like you were drinking

from a slow-moving stream

I heard you

as the Kate Spade

constructed critique

dripped through your ringed fingers

I watched you

as you spun your heads

and rolled your corrective lenses

in those small cages of heavy mascara

I caught you

as you walked away

shaking your heads like

disagreeable Parkinson’s patients

And I just wanted you to know

that the beard is a toy, a game,

a ruse.  It is, at best, a prop

I use to pick up attention

like still-husked corn.

And I am disappointed

because I thought you would understand.

Knowing you too seek attention,

you must—

with those thighs sculpted

by a baker’s dozen,

that hair, a stringy mop,

you must have dyed and re-dyed

like schizophrenic eggs,

those plastic shorts and oversized

shirts that cover everything and

still whisper of a ravaged woman.

We both worked for it ladies.

Mine makes me a cartoon,

yours—the vapid precipitate that comes

once privilege and pretense dry.