Heidi Seaborn was once a diva, a jet setting global communications executive, who moved 27 times, raised three children, and married and divorced a few times. Then she fell to earth, becoming a poet in 2016. Her poetry collections include: PANK Books Poetry Award winner An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe (2021) and the acclaimed Give a Girl Chaos (C&R Press, 2019) and three chapbooks of poetry including the 2020 Comstock Review Prize Chapbook, Bite Marks (2021), as well as Finding My Way Home (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Once a Diva (dancing girl press, 2021). She’s won or been shortlisted for over two dozen awards. Her poetry and essays have recently appeared in American Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best American Poetry, Brevity, Copper Nickel, The Cortland Review, The Financial Times, The Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Washington Post and elsewhere. She is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU and a BA from Stanford University. www.heidiseabornpoet.com
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The Diva on a Budget
Always a top-line kinda girl,
The Diva must now stick to a budget.
Less is more and all that
apparently is the new order.
The Diva draws up a list of needs.
Oh what it takes to maintain her Diva-ness.
She needs lotions, potions, rings, glittery
things, shoes, furs, holidays and houses.
Want is a need for The Diva
and The Diva needs what she wants
not what will fit the tidy budget
of cells, columns and sums.
The Diva justifies, then just
demands, then just cuts
her Diva life to align
to her reduced bottom line.