Judith Rechter

A Classy Plan

I don’t acknowledge a line at the Met for the ladies room (stretches across the salon impeding progress). Women line up without protest. Crystals tinkle overhead. Great costumed coloraturas and tenors line the room, in exhibit cases in period diadems and girdles, memorials of an elegant past. You ripen in long damask skirts and diamond chokers, juggle a well worn but hidden reservoir. Why do men have all the advantage using their dicks to take advantage even in opera? And bathrooms? to hell with those balls. How to civilize a tawdry world. Serial ladies who hold off, keep it in, queasy internal stuff and bladder infections; your ciggy breath, a false bravado. Do you know a safe place where we might hang out after the music?






Judith Rechter's poems have appeared in No More Masks, Perspective, Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry & Prose, Sinister Wisdom, and What I Want From You, an East Bay Anthology. Her first collection of poems, Wild West, was published by RAW ArT PRESS.