New Poem: Mes Femmes Sauvages et Beaux

Many thanks to Tess Kincaid for today's fascinating prompt.  See others' responses at The Mag.

Wind of History   Jacek Yerka 

Mes Femmes Sauvages et Beaux

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

John Keats, Le Belle Dame Sans Merci

Mother dreamed profane largesse,

thought she should live

at Monticello.

But Winifred’s old Anglia caught fire

and she ran a stop sign drunk,

killing her passenger,

broke out of her body cast.

The women in my family

couldn’t be tamed or kept.

After I left the canyon,

our A-frame caught fire

and no one thought

to save the cats.

A rebuilding is unjust.

Gyorgy had no Monticello,

but his cabin was home;
he died in a tent

on scorched ground

near a smoking cairn of ash.

I couldn’t stay;

I had to leave. When I was cornered

in my wheelchair

by leering owls, I launched

flaming epithets, called a cab,

willing to sport a peg-leg

all my days.

What is the mean streak,

the Irish coming-after-you gene
in the distended carotid
of every diva with our name?

Even Mother rose

from her Garboesque despair, 

disabled the nursing home alarm,

ran to the beauty parlor,

and was cursing me out loud

when her heart shuddered

and the neon filaments

of her jailbreak dream 

went dark.

copyright Jenne' R. Andrews 2013