Roadie by Sharon Waller Knutson

She looks like a Barbie Doll
with her painted face and nails,
synthetic breasts rising

under her pink T-shirt,
long lean legs in Levis,
small feet in slingback stiletto sandals.

From a red Cardinals Baseball cap,
her hair, once golden, now silver,
falls like a blanket over her shoulders.

Navajo bracelets jangle
on both wrists as she carries
the electric guitar and microphone

for the Kenny Rogers lookalike
she has followed cross country
for a quarter of a century.

Her face is a roadmap of where
they’ve been since she left
her children behind with their father

in the trailer park eating pizza
and drinking coca cola
and watching a Braves game,

but the past is about to catch up
as their adult faces shine
in the audience like a neon sign.



Sharon Waller Knutson is a retired journalist whose poems have appeared recently in Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Five-Two and The Song Is… Her first full-length book collection, What the Clairvoyant Doesn’t Tell You, will be published by Kelsay Books in October.