Fairy Godmothers with ample laps
and June Cleaver faces slid down the rabbit hole
of old dial-up phones, ten cent colas, Betsy Wetsys, 
and scratchy LPs an innocent lifetime ago.

Try strutting about nowdays in tiara and starched skirt, 
waving a wand---the madhouse will open its jaws
and swallow you whole, but

my fairy godmother is clever.
She dresses like Eleanor Roosevelt,
talks like Eleanor., looks like Eleanor,
says she is Eleanor, back from the dead.

Each night she brings me hot chocolate, sits,
tell stories about quiet fireside chats,
her husband's withered legs and how much 
she thought he loved her before Lucy.

She reminds me to floss every night 
and to be sure to carry an umbrella 
should sudden thunderstorms threaten. 
She emphasizes that one must learn to
be brave in cold emptied beds
ever so much as on battlefields,
littered with the corpses of those 
who once called our name.


Pris Campbell
©2005


Published in The Dead Mule
   Spring Edition 2007

The above award, given by the  International War Veterans Poetry Association is given 12 times a year for a particular poem. This poem was chosen for May.. It is quite an honour..  Thank you Tony!

Art: Torso Profile by Janet Butler

Click HERE to visit her website. A truly wonderful artist. she recently moved to California from Italy. She exhibits her work internationally.