The Capris of Middle Age

Vicky Macdonald Harris

No longer the resort capris of Laura Petrie

dancing past her husband forever flat

on the floor; she espousing her deception

in the 1960’s trope of sly hoodwinking

for gain, with luscious undercutting

smiles of perfectly drawn lips,

but now the capris of refuge and repair.

Capitalizing on placement, the middle

aged capris sit hiding, taut three quarter length,

failing to reenact what was, forever

pedestrian.  Their properties gather

emerging history

and dispense calves still

shapely, fractioning up the whole.


In print, Vicky MacDonald Harris’ poems reside in the NaPoChapBook
collection published by Big Game Books, and The Lincoln Underground.
Her poem, Disaster Capitalism, was published in The Flat Water Stirs:
An Anthology of Emerging Nebraska Poets in 2017. Two short stories
were published in Return to Deathlehem: An Anthology of Holiday
Horrors in 2014 and their later anthology, O Unholy Night in
Deathlehem in 2018.

Online her poems can be found at Tiny Poems, Two Cities Review, Poets
and Artists, Hobble Creek Review, the24project, The Prairie Sage, and
in Women Poets Wearing Sweatpants Tumblr.