Hosiery running deep
by Peg Duthie
Inspired by Reb Livingston
Enough of your hoity-toity sins,
your Whitman's sampler of sluttiness. Give
me lime-peel Medusas and paint-on-stockinged sirens.
I want a marvel of a monster — one more than mist and malarkey,
one whose kisses taste of poisoned ducks and polluted White Russians,
a Turkish delight that pillows and then smothers the wannabe princelings
stuffing their cheeks with rosewater-rinsed wands. Raffish?
Hardly. Rattlesnakes? Please. The windswept, wuthering
warblings about moonlit trysts and heists of the heart
don't ever sing beyond the fat thrill of betrayal.
and the manila pockets inside the back covers
no longer hoard the names of stray maidens
seduced by the gloss and the gilt
of sweet paper-mache scenery
spackled with its own
chewed-over centers.
Peg Duthie lives in Nashville, Tennessee. She writes courseware for the military health system and sermons for a Unitarian Universalist congregation. Her poems are forthcoming inThe Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel — Second Floor, Scifaikuest, and elsewhere. Her website is at www.nashpanache.com.