Runner-Up

A person with shoulder-length wavy hair seen in a jogging pose. They wear a tank top, shorts, and sneakers. They are wearing headphones on their ears, which are connected to a Walkman cassette player clipped to their shorts. They look off to their right.

Mom should’ve been a model

everyone says.

Wide eyes

with green-colored contacts,

cheekbones tuned to max volume

heart-shaped face framed

with flirty

summer-blond hair.

“If anyone asks, I’m a

natural blonde,” she tells me,

as her mother told her,

“That’s exactly

what it says

on the bottle after all.”

Mom reaffirms it each month

with a box from the drugstore.

She is thin-thin-thin

and everything

else that a woman should be.

Enchanting my father so absolutely.

He calls her Lady Godiva

with nude desire uncomfortable to witness.

Like they’re alone

with their lust.

A Sony Walkman cassette player with a cassette tape inside. A pair of headphones with circular speaker cushions and a thin adjustable headband sits around it.

My mother turns heads

on the street

at the mall

even in church.

The neighbors wait, as she

gets ready, pulls on shorts

laces up sneakers, clips on Walkman, then

base / concealer / eyeliner / lipstick / powder / mascara /

and blush that is wasted on a

face soon flushed

as she jogs along the road.

Tears of sweat,

milky with foundation,

flow down her neck as she

parades     past.

A collection of makeup products comprised of two uncapped lipsticks, one capped lipstick, an eyeliner pencil, mascara, a four-color eyeshadow pallet, and a bottle labeled ‘Shine Free.’