Michelle A. Ladwig

LESLIE CARON'S ALTER EGO


People tell me I look like a dancer, especially when I pull my hair into a tight
bun balanced on the crown of my head. I wonder if they know about the tabletops.

And the poles. They tell me I look like a librarian with my tortoise shell glasses
and the books spread about. I wonder if they know about the published

erotica and collection of male nudes. (Don’t I wish I meant real nude men).
When I go home they tell me I look like my mother. But not my father.

They say I look young. Like a teenager, a little girl, a dreamer, or one of those crazy
writer types up in New York City, replete with beret and snapping fingers.

I wonder if they know about the performance art, the lipstick lesbian in the bathroom
stall, the bitch in heels with red hair matching the down-below, that I would steal


from the White House given half the chance, and that, yes, I fuck like a bad headache.

Michelle A. Ladwig has been published in Thieves Jargon, Gumball Poetry, and has performed at Atlanta’s 7 Stages and Word Diversity Collective: Naked, Pagan & Uncensored, where all three of those adjectives were involved. She spends her free time promoting the merit of dark beers and contemplating the best place for a tattoo.