junie monroe, was the girl in film. she should have been. hair like light. eyes like plates, too big for her face. sweet, blushing cheeks.
you'd see her in ads. one for lip stains...a smallish job, one for a teenage clothing line, but just the spring fling edition. she looked out from billboards, as teen girls went searching stores for lacy things, pastel silk slips, golden hair clips. oh, she'd wanted that so bad. she stared vacant, a pearly white, red lipped smile from that huge board, the biggest thing you'd ever seen, presiding over highways, peeking out from behind buildings. the public were enamoured with the blonde beauty queen, from April to June. she seemed angelic, only a sweet child, a petite, pink-cheeked faery. but other times she felt like a mother, observing her children. people even said she had a club. it was called the FDA. no, not what you think, it stood for Fat Dan's Angel. they organised meetings in parks, during the unnatural heat of May that year, distributing zines, flyers, stickers and little pin badges, her eyes replaced with stars. in the zines, they'd have a competition, who could guess her name correctly? I'll tell you some of the names they tried:
Evita
Posey
Elizabeth
Gloriana
Tatiana
Luci
Angel (they were so ridiculously literal, it made you want to vomit)
there were members of the public who sent frantic letters to the teen clothing brand-named The Chic Cuties, which was a subsidiary of Truly Pretty, a lingerie company for older woman, all of which was owned by Fat Dan's, a glorious empire of product, in which its owner-Fat Dan-started as a diner back in 1952. It's funny how these things connect.
no one would tell them who she was. she was a mystery girl, another pretty face on the road, just like the young girls in the subway ads, the magazine cutouts, gleaming white teeth, glossed over eyes. at some point, they'd all roll into one, a jumbled mix of skin, hair, teeth, but they'd barely be monstrous. the public had named her Stella by late May, and in mid June, after an unprecedented long run, she was taken down and replaced with an ad for manual hand push lawnmowers.
YOU ARE READING
jolie memphis
PoetrySuzanne led me over to the gap, that pale opaque liquid seeping into my skin-honey, I realised. she leaned in close, voice warm and soft, the scent of aniseed on her breath. you can be anyone you want, she whispered. I closed my eyes. who are yo...
