Olympia by Robin Crane

The crooked holding back of her smile,

A simultaneous desire for glory and

Annihilation.

We, me and her, were always doing something

Self-defeating,

As though we couldn’t help it,

telepathically whispering “hey, watch this,”

and pouring a pan of grease all over

a long worked-on party ensemble.

We did it because it was funny

To each other,

We did it because we were both ruined anyway,

Two white middle class girls –

Who on t.v. would understand why this ruined us?

Because it’s the shape and smell of mediocrity

And just enough safety to prevent

Full-fledged deaths.

But what about bruised ribs

And broken teeth?

Always doing things the wrong way,

Half on purpose,

Wanting a type of Woody Guthrie life,

To be a wanderer, to have interesting stories

And no more petty cares,

But instead just winding up the girl in the song,

the girl who loses her good looks

In “Like a Rollingstone” –

we’re invisible now,

we got no secrets to conceal.

Why do anything?

For glory,

In spite of ourselves.

For lives that’ll be hard but magic.

Robin Crane: I am a twenty nine year old fiction writer and poet, born in Los Angeles, currently living in Philadelphia, on a street sometimes occupied with horses; it never ceases to surprise me. Works of mine have been published in Olympia Literary Yarn, Newtopia, Poetry Superhighway, All Things Girl (“Dating Show,” published a few issues back) and the anthology ‘Zine Scene.