Shop girl (Bronwyn Lovell)

if you are waiting for the right girl
the really truly special one who blows
your mind and cock and the girl shop
doesn’t have her in yet you can take
a loan girl until the right one comes
and then you can return the other one
since they mostly dust off fine
you might just have to wait a long time
to buy the girl you’re looking for
and even then she may not be available
straight away but thankfully
there are women who will let you
take them home with nothing sparkly
you can drive them round and round
for free while looking for a better one
there are women who will wait
in the passenger seat


Bronwyn Lovell is a writer living in Adelaide, Australia. Her work has appeared in Best Australian Poems, Meanjin, Antipodes, Cordite, Australian Love Poems, Australian Poetry Journal and Strange Horizons. Her poetry has won the Val Vallis Award and the Adrien Abbott Poetry Prize; been shortlisted for the Fair Australia, Newcastle, Bridport and Montreal prizes; and nominated for a Rhysling Award by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. She is a PhD candidate at Flinders University, where she is researching depictions of women in space in real life and science fiction stories, while composing a verse novel about a female astronaut on a mission to Mars. Her essay ‘Science Fiction’s Women Problem’ gained international attention and was a finalist for the CHASS Australia Prize for a Student. You can find her online at bronwynlovell.com or follow her on Twitter @lovellybronwyn.