by Susan McLean
Overheard in Southern California
“I can’t believe we have to wear masks again
just to save eight fat old women,” one
hipster, walking past me, told the other,
staring at me, no longer young nor thin.
Which crones would she gladly jettison? Her grandmother?
Her eighth-grade English teacher? Did she imagine
a merciful weeding of homeless crazies or
the clutter of ghosts at care facilities?
Of one thing I felt sure: she couldn’t picture
herself at seventy, softened by loss and sadness,
weighted with aches, regrets, lost fantasies,
and wanting nothing from life except some sweetness.
Susan McLean, a retired English professor from Southwest Minnesota State University, has published two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and a book of translations of the Latin poems of Martial, Selected Epigrams. She is the translations editor at Better Than Starbucks.