At the Bar, I Use a Fake Name
The consequences are never worth it,
but I go anyway,
preening myself into a new identity.
Someone who knows how to let go,
have fun,
someone who doesn’t give a damn,
someone who can scrape scraps of joy
from the surface of a sticky bar,
swallow it like peanuts and cheap beer,
someone who knows how it feels
to be in the world
despite the grime beneath my nails,
the tear in my shirt, the wear of my shoes,
and who can fold the judgement
into their napkin, tossing it
into the bathroom trash
where she stands to wait for the man
who bought her a drink.
*
Amy Le Ann Richardson is a writer, educator, and community organizer based on her family farm in Kentucky. She is the author of three poetry collections, including Out of Places (Pine Row Press), and the editor of the forthcoming anthology Rooted, Resilient, Rising: Women Growing Food across the Mountains (University Press of Kentucky). Richardson is the founder and director of the Bloodroot Young Writers Collective and co-founder of the Appalachian Literary Arts Festival in Morehead, Kentucky. An inaugural National Arts Futures Fellow and recipient of Kentucky Foundation for Women grants, her work explores Appalachian identity, land, and the generational knowledge carried by mountain women.
