I was in the lingerie section, fingering the goods. I plunged my hands into a pile of panties, the silk, the silk, the silk… A sales woman in a fuscia cashmere sweater stared. She kept her eyes on my face while I opened and closed my fists over and over again.
“May I help you?” she said.
I kept my hands down in the pile, but I thought to compose myself enough to smile at her. Pause, I said to myself, collect yourself, and oh, the silk, the silk, the silk… and then I said, “No thanks. I’m just lurking.”
Miriam N. Kotzin teaches literature and creative writing at Drexel University in Philadelphia, where she is director of the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing. She also serves as advisor to Maya, the student literary magazine. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (print) and online in Slow Trains, Smoke Long Quarterly, Littoral, Storied World, The Glut, Toasted Cheese, SaucyVox, The Beat, Southern Ocean Review and Xaxx. Her poetry has been published in a number of print magazines, among them: The Iron Horse Literary Review, The Painted Bride Quarterly, Boulevard (for which she is a contributing editor), The Mid-American Review, The Southern Humanities Review, Pulpsmith, and Confrontation. Online her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Small Spiral Notebook, Drexel Online Journal, the Vocabula Review, Three Candles, the Poetry Super Highway, For Poetry.com, Word Riot, the Front Street Review, Open Wide, Segue, edificeWRECKED!, Shampoo, Eclectica, FRiGG, Flashquake, Circle Magazine, Branches, Plum Ruby Review, Gator Springs Gazette, Blaze, The Green Tricycle, Riverbabble, MAG: Muse Apprentice Guild, Mini Mag, Snow Monkey, Maverick Magazine, Poems Niederngasse, Carnelian, Facets, Valparaiso Poetry Review.
Oh. And Yankee Pot Roast.
Oh. And Yankee Pot Roast.
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