Mary De Rachewiltz

She stands at the top of the stair as childless Tom saw her weep. Fatherless in red Spyders elsewhere rich daughters whiz through Paris or cruise the Greek Islands as non- daddy leaps in grasshopper fashion on a merry-go-round. Tall and bony they’re properly married, endowed. Spared such a fate, the richly poor country girl sometimes resented her tattered state. Having to seek treasures in a briar patch, she found daffodils and violets in dewy meadows mid-March. Now late in the years, the wind lays burnished gold leaves on her feet.

. . . mangiavano le rose. Because I do not know what a hendecasyllable is and words is all I have to transubstantiate and give, within me I hunger for a tongue of my own, unpronounceable flavors worth a thousand madeleines (Monsieur P.) as hunting-horns spiral through my belly and I say:

Now She knows what it feels like