Katie Beswick

Three Teenage Girls: 1997

(or, a rebuttal to Steve Orlen’s “Three Teenage Girls: 1956”)

Three teenage girls in pink boob tubes and strappy plastic platform shoes

and hair split by zig-zag partings, tied high in bunches

are walking down the high street, swearing and laughing.

Swinging half-drunk bottles of wine by the neck

they sashay in the light drizzle, the closest to the road

sticks her thumb out to hail any passing bus.

Every Friday night they rave, and wet or dry

they’ll make a riot of it; on the back of the bus or a in a nightclub.

And now they’re standing outside the off-licence, pulses pounding

beneath the bare meat of their necks. Night closes around them like a circle.

The prettiest asks some bearded guy to buy them a bottle of vodka

and a packet of B&H. He appraises them with a thin, predatory grin

and the third, the boldest, famous for her misspelt shoulder tattoo, 

says, it’s alright mate, we’ll ask someone else, we ain’t that desperate.

Katie Beswick is a writer from south east London. Her recent poems have appeared in Hog River Press, The Waxed Lemon, Dust Poetry Magazine, Ballast, and The Haibun Journal, among others. Her chapbook is Plumstead Pram Pushers (Red Ogre 2024). She was Rattle's winner for Prompt Poem of the Month in October 2024, and longlisted for Canterbury Festival's 2024 Poet of the Year. She teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London.