C. S. Fuqua


Two Women

Two women slapped me —
the angry sitter who later claimed
I’d held my breath;
then the senior on the bus,
the last day of school,
during a paper fight.
Each left her print on the same cheek,
prints that lasted days.
The sitter put me straight to bed
and dared me to say anything to anyone.
The senior grinned and said
I deserved it for being who I was.
I touched the prints on my cheek,
the sitter’s so much larger than my own fingers,
the senior’s not so much.
Odd, two women who never mattered,
leaving marks that have lasted as long
as marks left by those who did.

C.S. Fuqua’s books include White Trash & Southern ~ Collected Poems ~ Vol. I, Hush, Puppy! A Southern Fried Tale (children’s picture book), Rise Up (short fiction collection), The Native American Flute: Myth, History, Craft, Trust Walk (short fiction collection), The Swing: Poems of Fatherhood, Divorced Dads, and Notes to My Becca, among others. His work has also appeared in a number of journals.
 
 
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