I sold a single ticket
for a Gretchen Wilson concert
to an older man
for $57.75 – regular seating,
close to the stage, but not front row.
As I ran his Master Card he picked
at the weathered gray paint of the counter,
said, “Gretchen’s going to make me better.”
In measured words he told me that he
had lost his wife to cancer three weeks before –
his daughter two months before that -
(cancer as well, he said, rolling his eyes).
I bit down hard, said again and again
“I’m so sorry” – hollow words
that I wanted to mean so much more,
but couldn’t find a way to say it.
I handed him his ticket, and he thanked me,
said the concert would
get him out of the house again,
and through the worn glass that separated us,
I could still see the way his eyes watered,
how he blinked quickly to force it all away.
I tried to memorize him that day,
to trace the line of his jaw,
the way his dark hair was hinting so slightly
of grey. The night of the show
I stood at the gate, scanned faces
for one that resembled his,
hoped that I would recognize him,
that I hadn’t forgotten him that easily.
Somehow, in the mass of cowboy hats and anticipation,
I never found him in the crowd.
Apple girl grew like a slender sapling.
Her rosy cheeks sang of open spaces,
a land of horses and steppes
and a people who defied empires.
Seeing her long limbs, her
chestnut tresses, never trimmed,
and green eyes that reflected open sky,
Scout called her “Fairy Tale Princess”
and tempted her with tales of a shiny
New Apple City.
They flew there,
where handlers locked Princess in a steel tower,
and courtesans fed her poison
that tasted just like a martini.
A dark spell fell over her.
But as she strolled down the catwalk,
no one noticed she was sleepwalking.
They thought her blank stare a pose,
or a trick to keep the makeup from cracking.
Lovers climbed up the ladder of her long locks,
but not to rescue her.
She couldn’t find the staircase down
and there was no Prince’s kiss to break her spell.
She asked the mirror: Am I the unhappiest girl of all?
But the question only echoed back at her.
She left the tower the only way she knew how.
And, just like the princesses
in the fairy tales we’ve been told,
we’ll never know her as old.
--Anne Rettenberg
Dark lily
grew on a tender stalk and
opened his petals to the world.
Praised and swooned over, he gently bowed to his fans.
Then hummingbirds stuck their sharp bills in his heart
and tried to suck the sweetness out of him.
The crows spread lies about him over the cornfields
and some believed them.
He keeps his petals closer now, but bent toward me
when he saw me before him, yearning hopelessly.
His beauty, like an opiate fragrance,
drugged me into speechless stupor.
Hypnotized, I grew roots into the earth.
Our eyes locked, our gazes held,
and we were in the original garden--
the one unsullied by shoeprints,
where the sun and the rain pass no judgment
and the birds sing arias.
The power there no words can diminish.
I saw him vibrant, unbreakable.
But soon he released me from his spell --
having little time, and many admirers.
He smiled at me with knowing sympathy
(having once been, himself, a supplicant).
With a nod, he dismissed me from his garden
and uprooted, I staggered out the gate,
wishing I could have wrapped my tendrils around him.
When finally we get to meet--
if you one day turn ‘round in the street--
I’ll woo you and whisk you away.
I’ll take you wherever you say.
I’ll wine you and dine you; I’ll pay.
Or perhaps you’ll step out of a limo
and you’ll notice my face in the crowd.
And I’m going to tell you I love you
and I’m going to say it out loud.
But whenever I’m planning to give you my heart
there’s a rope or a copper to keep us apart.
I treasure my clippings of you,
stuck in a scrapbook with glue.
Even the ones pointing out that your hips
have seen too many chips.
To me it doesn’t matter
if a bikini doesn’t flatter.
‘Cos I think I prefer you
a little fatter.
You can dump your rich fiancé
who I read once shagged Beyoncé
after a gig.
The dirty pig.
That goal scoring Brazilian
is worth about twenty million
so they say.
But he still shouldn’t treat you that way.
And I reckon he’s covering up that he’s gay.
Anyway,
they say he’ll be sold to Madrid.
So you’ll be well rid.
I don’t have much money it’s true,
but never would I cheat on you.
Not even if Beyoncé was to knock on my door,
get on her knees and beg me to.
We can live in my house once we’re wed -
now that my mum’s dead.
We can snuggle up safe in my bed,
under my Sheffield United bedspread.
Though I’d best get a king size instead.
And think what fun it will be--
just you and me
on my mum’s old settee,
with satellite TV
and a family bucket from KFC.
And I’ll always be on the alert
for newspapers digging for dirt,
for cameras pointing up your skirt--
so they can tell if you might
have cellulite.
Or got no pants on tonight.
I’ll see it on a dodgy internet site.
There’s nobody else so I’ll wait,
‘cos it’s going to happen – it’s Fate.
But for now it’s just me
dreaming how it will be
as I stand in the rain at your gate.
--Dylan DiVilde
About the poets in this issue:
Paige Cerulli is currently a Senior at Westfield State College in Westfield, Massachusetts, where she majors in Music Performance and English. In her spare time she enjoys writing, playing her flute and riding her horse. She plans to graduate this spring and hopes to go on to graduate school to pursue a career in writing.
Anne Rettenberg is Editor of Eat a Peach: A Poetry Journal.
“Dylan di Vilde” lives in the UK. He has a wife, two children and a plump goldfish, Nella. He began writing poems whilst at a loose end one day and, several loose ends later, has amassed quite a large pile of them. His favourite poem is Cargoes by John Masefield.