Sorcery, and: Stop, and: Complaint

Abstract

Sorcery, and: Stop, and: Complaint Marilyn Kallet (bio) Sorcery Why did his ex dump him? Once freed, Euridice never would. Just the word wood made her swoon. But it wasn’t words that drew her, or the lyre. She was stuck on his rock-climber’s body. He could bolt her out of this pit, flash up the narrow chute. She’d wrap her legs around him and he’d forget his shaky Elvis knee, the eons she’d been wasted. She knew how to fold a man in the cocoon of her hair and silk him down. He never called. Stone smothered the cave mouth, and Ali Baba signed with Disney. She tried to whistle but her lips cracked and the tunnel kaboomed in 1970. The only orifice was dream, she aimed her ribbon of song. The tabby on the master bed turned an ear to the ripple. Orpheus was so far gone inside himself [End Page 28] at first he thought he was Rilke, on leave from countess Marie. Then reverie secreted something about black silk, black cherry lipstick, the hardwood cherry sideboard in his dining room. Gleaming, it lured him. Stop Stop in the name of love! —The Supremes Stop being beautiful, just stop, Dante urged radiant Beatrice. He spied her once— Judge Judy: Shush! I’m dialing. Bea? Dante claims he eyeballed you, one shot. And nights when your parents weren’t home? How many times? Two, three? Men and thirteen-year-olds are liars. LIARS! I’ve raised lots of them! Bea needed a nap. Heaven and all the judging kept her up. Stop yourself, she hissed at Dan. So your hair has launched a thousand hips! Your curls snake my side-view. Thank God for your arthritis that, at least, Eros can’t translate. Danny, let me ease into immaculate without your floating hair waving me back. One Way. Senso Unico. No more sidelong glances stirring me like a swizzle stick. You act thirteen. In human years, I’m sixty-one. You’ll never be half. [End Page 29] Dante moaned stop. Bea tried to end being beauteous, but the edges of her radiated heat that D turned to light. Do that for me, too, poetry begged. Ditched for words, Bea yowled, Take your rapt hands with you! Complaint Surrounded by my designer products, how can I die? Decleor for my face, Coach for my credit cards, I’m headed for Eternity. Though yesterday when the pimply teen at the Johnson City Wendy’s offered me the senior citizen’s discount, I was crushed for a sec. Today in fleet Nikes & Adidas racing pants [End Page 30] I’m back, outstripping my own best time. Only my downcast boobs toll an elegiac note. Marilyn Kallet Marilyn Kallet is the author of fourteen books, including Packing Light: New and Selected Poems (Black Widow P). When she started graduate work at Rutgers in 1968, no tenured women professors were in the comparative literature program, and 95 percent of the books on the reading list were by men. Her essay about surviving that time, “Poetry Began Me,” is included in her anthology of personal essays, Sleeping with One Eye Open: Women Writers and the Art of Survival, coedited with Judith Ortiz Cofer. Copyright © 2009 University of Nebraska Press