My mother didn’t prepare me for Mr. T,
for the cobalt blue spandex,
tight bulge-big package yelled:
“Get in the picture, little fool.”
I held my fist, tight against my turtle
in a blue pond t-shirt
and looked into the Polaroid camera
then turned eye-level to Mr. T’s blue bulge,
he said, “I like your turtle-tee, little girl!”
— Deena November
Deena November has been published by Houghton Mifflin Co. and numerous other presses and journals including Nerve Cowboy, Women Write Resistance, Keyhole Magazine and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Her chapbook DICK WAD was published by Hyacinth Girl Press in 2012, and she is currently working on a new manuscript about motherhood. She holds an MFA in poetry from Carlow University, where she then taught in the English and women’s studies programs. Currently November teaches creative writing, literature and communications at Robert Morris University and enjoys strolling through the gardens of Phipps with her toddler and baby.