Poem: ELOPEMENT PACKAGE 310 (ef)

Congratulations, you’ve just purchased Package 310:

Supernatural Opponents: The Maiden in the Tower.

Excellent choice, young lovers!

Renowned champions of consensuality,

We propose:

A custom elopement for one flaxen-braided maid and one bramble-blinded prince.

Get your pulse racing with a daring escape from an all-inclusive

Yet somewhat isolated tower - in your choice of silver or stone.

Find yourself pursued by your selection of villainess, be it ogress, fairy or sorceress.

Send your pursuer packing with a scattering of our proprietary blend of enchanted nuts.

(Once released, most nuts convert to dog, lion or wolf.

Actual results may vary. Selection based on seasonal availability.)

From there, we’ll tend to all but the basest of your remaining unanswered wants:

Treat your coiled, rumpled plaits to a scalp massage, color and trim

(Those split-ends look like they’ve been clambered on for a hundred years, my dear).

Sate your appetites with our award-winning regional wines and a hearty meal

featuring our signature breadsticks and all the parsley pesto you can handle.

Then, my osculating oddballs, you’re on your own -

Off to explore what remains of your Ever After,

And that is certainly not covered by the limits of our package warranty.

Against the hopes pinned on one’s future,

Most any prince is rarely ever matched fairly.

Even more challenging to be paired with such a lass

Whose hair requires more than a little letting down.

10.09.13 eaf

'a little bit' by Stuart Crowther

POEM: Fighting Fire, by Michael Montlack

I first felt it that afternoon in your family room
when you offered me your toy chest's newest claim--
the red plastic bullhorn, a miniature of your fireman father's,
a birthday gift for his only son:
Ten years old and nearly half my size!

Go on, take it! your voice projected,
the hollow horn's mouth aligned with your own
like a kiss I could see inside,
one that amplified some unspoken urgency,
a pre-adolescent emergency:
my own inner fire.

Really, take it, you said. He can get me another.

Were you casting off some hand-me-down
or trying to please me, your new pal?
I worried and wondered
if all my desires were as easily sensed.

I didn't want someone else's present.
What I wanted was that kiss.
I was just scared
someone might hear.
So I buried it one night in my backyard
and prayed for your father's forgiveness
then swore I'd never again take
a gift I was not ready to accept.

The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide (Nov 1, 2007)
COPYRIGHT 2007 Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc.
Copyright 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

Poem: Waxy & Battered (ef)

Waxy and battered - weary we return
Television sparks and invades the room
Done skiing - spent with numbness & burnt by snow
A shortcut across the years, back to Maine
Single-pane storm-clouded windows
Heaving with frost & heavy plastic
Thoughts swathed in so many layers
Flying wild into the wind, then avalanche
We cut trenches across the plainness

Until our legs, arms & lungs surrender
This is the art of retreat:
The warmth of a hot shower, catnap,
Belly-filling meal & tannic, sating wine,
Sleep-inducing sex.
A wish you'd been in my deeper past.

03.01.08 ef