“Under the Influence of Affluence” Alexia Norton Jones – First Place
East Hampton’s hot August wind, the splintered path among the dunes down from our summer house to the beach. They looked like movie stars, perfect bodies their laughter and barely there bikinis. But no one looked like me, I was brown with Afro hair, fourteen years old, invisible, inside my parents’ designer dream home. Interested only in what they wanted. I hoped for a hug, even one. In the silences I sank into oblivion. The Hamptons had the beautiful ones. Tanned boys down One Mile beach, Twenty-four year olds, went to bars, drove sports cars, wore hippie clothes, had mustaches. I wanted to be with them. I wanted to be like the girls they craved, lithe, golden, confident, like the one who said, “your friends are your lovers your lovers are your friends.”
Poetry
Vortex
103
