Little Miss Electra

This is the first poem I ever had published in respected journal. Kind of clunky in some parts now that I look back on it, but I think it's still a worthwhile read.

Little Miss Electra
by Katie Kidder

I like old guys, because they are gray where I am dyed.
Old men amusing me with motown Otis after hours
supposing I don't know that with the lights down and our faces numb from a cheap shiraz,
I look like that little Miss Rah-Rah they never got to palm
in the green glow of their daddies' dashboards.

I like old guys, because they have dyed where I will gray.
Old men with thighs that forgot to age, bellies that remembered,
and hindsight like the long impregnable stare of a fighter pilot.
They have seen wars, read books about wars,
waged little private wars of their own
back when I was still a part of my father's fight.

I like old guys because they will lose the gray before I dye.
Old men with crows' feet around the eyes and tobacco in their sighs
they are not the dad I knew when I was five.
Not that one with the farmer's tan and the cocaine fog,
and not the one when I was twenty-three, too drunk to know the difference
between his girlfriend's name and mine.

I like old guys because they do not care about the gray.
Old men as flawless as my father was when I was twelve and he was sober,
when we discussed our dreams over stewed meat and moon pies.
What would Jung say? What would Freud think?
Perfect, beautiful old men who know who I'm looking for,
but still, they let me look.

Originally published at the Exquisite Corpse