Tag Archives: Aging

Arts & Culture

FICTION: All the Bodies

by Phebe Jewell

What does a 70-year-old wear to a drag show? 

Nancy runs her fingers over silk blouses, linen tunics, then shuts the closet door. Really? It’s the Milagro Bar on Beacon, not Vegas. No need to change out of jeans and a tee shirt. She and Barb are catching Margo Largo’s first set over a few drinks.  

Still, it’s her birthday tomorrow. 71. Not a milestone like 70 or 75. She would be okay skipping it altogether, but Barb insists. “Let’s celebrate your birthday for a whole week.”

Nancy’s never been afraid of getting old, but the latest changes in her body feel more like subtractions than additions.  

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Poetry

Sunday Stew: On Aging

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by Lola Peters

All my grapes have turned to raisins
All my plums are shriveled prunes
A four-lane highway lines my forehead
Bumps and pocks turn me to ruins

It’s not death that I find daunting
Not the end that looms ahead
It’s this daily dehydration
Sagging face and arms I dread

They don’t tell you when you’re thirty
As heads turn when you arrive
It won’t matter when you’re sixty
Some things you just can’t revive

The beauty and the ugly girl
Will wake up to betrayal
The genius and the brainless twit
Will have their projects fail

So glad I didn’t hesitate
To do what gave me joy
But now comes the adjustment
Like that gorgeous gift from Troy

I’m not the grand dame some envision
I’m not the vixen I still see
One of these days I’ll figure out
Who I’m now going to be

But in the here and now time
I’ll do all that I can
To be the woman I enjoy
While I carve out a plan.

Not the end.