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Spice_Girls_2008_01_cropped.jpg

POP Love! "Chicas to the Front"

February 12, 2018

By Nicole Steinberg

 

 

Well, I was looking to really spice
things up, right? So I snagged this hella posh
frock, flicked on some lemongrass-ginger
eau de heaux, flung my kid at the baby
sitter & jumped into my date's sporty
Corvette. Folks, he was fine; I'm talking scary

hot. I told him I'm not a big fan of scary
films or umami mommies or a spicy
amuse-bouche & I don't much care for sports
actually & he was like, pish-posh

love, you're fit & all, but don't be a baby.
How rude, I thought, as I gingerly

picked out a wedge. Eff this ginger
who thinks he's better than me. I'm not scared
of him or any man & I'm nobody's baby.
So I dumped his drunken, Old Spiced
arse at the pub & went to this posh
girly nightclub instead—zero sports

on widescreen TVs & loads of ladies sporting
multicolored pocket hankies. Ginger!
one yelled across the dance floor, perfectly posh
to the tips of her acrylics, sharp enough to scare
all the boys. She kissed me, full-on spicy
like cinnamon candy, said, Where you been, baby?

Back home, I likely had a screaming baby
& a sitter guzzling my wine but I missed the sport
of the chase & she was stacked like a spice
rack, so I ordered a Jack and Ginger,
threw myself into her shapely scarecrow
arms & curled against her like an apostrophe.

Not so posh
when you're with me
, she teased. I was scared
she'd realize her blunder & then I'd be baby
in a corner, not some kind of lush Sports

Illustrated model or whoever Ginger
was supposed to be, all sugar & tits & spice.

But I reckon my posh LBD looked good next to her sports bra
& I made the babysitter wait 'cause she tasted like gingerbread
& she damn well scared off my yen for men with her allspice thighs, all right?

 


Nicole Steinberg has a poetry chapbook forthcoming from Barrelhouse this year, FAT DREAMS, which was selected during the 2017 open reading period. In addition, she is the author of two full-length collections, Glass Actress (Furniture Press Books, 2017) and Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2013), and three other chapbooks, most recently Clever Little Gang, winner of the 4X4 Furniture Press Chapbook Award. She's the editor of a literary anthology, Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens (SUNY Press, 2011), and the founder of EARSHOT, a New York reading series for emerging writers. She currently lives in Philadelphia.

Tags: POP Love!, Nicole Steinberg, Chicas to the Front, Spice Girls, sestina
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