Home Shopping Fantasy

Christine, 22, has just collected a sample of the morning's first urine and waits for a plus or minus (please god minus) to decide the course of her life.  She flicks on the tube to distract her for the seven minutes and a woman with a Vaseline induced smile fondling a 14 karat gold bracelet like it was the first cock she ever touched tells her, today's special value is a must for every woman's jewelry collection Christine looks down at her eight dollar plastic watch Who needs a husband when you can have this? Luanne from Baton Rouge phones in to tell the host, Mary Jo, that she cannot live without her paraffin moisture therapy kit and that Mary Jo, gorgeous creature, is her favorite host. Christine dreams of moving into QVC studios where everyone is perfectly manicured, perky and rosy like they just ate soma and then rolled around in fox furs, and surrounded by shiny crap that distracts them from emptiness, where pregnancy tests are a myth from a savage land and no one has one night stands or periods or even genitals only porcelain dolls and karat weight.

Carrie Conners, originally from West Virginia, lives in Queens, NY and is an Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia CC-CUNY. Her poetry has appeared or will soon be featured in Quiddity, Little Patuxent Review, Animal, RHINO, and The Monarch Review, among other publications. She is also a poetry reader for Epiphany.