Gallery Girls of the Midwest Get Hung Up

by Rebecca Orchard

Gallery girls got legs. Long legs, short legs, thin legs, gallery girls step on stems and smile. Sometimes frown, sometimes blank bored face like I am a piece of art in this gallery too, motherfucker, legs and mouth and wearing black. Gallery girls of the Midwest go out into thick nights; gallery girls drink wine, drink vodka, take cigarettes from other mouths and squint through patio smoke. Gallery girls of the Midwest get high or go home, put feet up on the arms of their couches, feet at the end of short legs, long legs, gallery girls eat dry potato salad out of a big bowl balanced on their bellies, gallery girls watch cartoons and fall asleep with their makeup on and arms flung out, red-painted mouths and dark-painted nails. Gallery girls have dreams lit clearly from above, light angled obliquely across sculptures of their limbs, light brushing the landscapes they dismiss as passé.

Rebecca Orchard studied classical music at the Peabody Conservatory before baking professionally for seven years to support her writing habit. She now has her MFA in Fiction from Bowling Green State University and is currently in the PhD program at Florida State University. Her work has appeared in Tammy, The Pinch, Pigeon Pages, and The Baltimore Review, among others. Her work on the Voyager Golden Record has been profiled in The Guardian, BBC World Service NewsHour, and Atlas Obscura.