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Dr. DoLittle-DoLottle,
I am your llama with two heads.
You push then pull me
crooning “If I could talk to the animals.”
I live in your zoo.
You feed fantastic feelings; fill me
with fool's gold. Your pyrite parole lulls trust.
I can't help but be snowed by the glow.
Then your gaze shifts.
Round the other head of your stray -
an unfortunate interjection into your life,
this two-headed llama stuck
in the midst of space you want clear. Starve
me, kick me, push me
away.
I imagine
a beast-parade career.
We march right through.
You, centered and clear,
chat to a cheetah,
and on the quarter till
the good critters leave ya.
People ask,
"can you speak in rhinoceros?"
You say,
"Of courserous, I've trained, you see."
You DoLittle-DoLottle,
with your zoological degree,
haven't quite mastered the dialect of
the two-headed varmint
stuck from being pushed and pulled:
this barbarian monstrosity,
this mutt.
So I stay staggered
while you prance around
in your finery
now pulling
then pushing me.
A two-headed llama, no.
Just me - Noah's untamed shipwreck,
I grunt, squeak and squawk
like the animal I am,
and you are much too
enlightened
for me.
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Leon Kolokowksi claimed my hymen.
He was forty and played third cello with the Boston Pops,
his sausage fingers more at home in a deli cooler
than on a cellist's lithe, dancing hands.
I was fifteen and obsessed with my sexual evolution.
Leon's father was Polish, his heritage
dating back to royalty--
or so he said.
Evenings, when Leon wasn't rehearsing,
and mother was at Bible meetings,
we 'did it' on the oriental rug,
Leon's hands raising my buttocks high,
head buried between my legs,
watering the rug's rhododendrons
to near dew point
'til mother's foot hit the first step.
When mother visited Aunt Claudia,
Leon took vacation time, pressing me hard
against my virginal bed nightly,
elephantine fingers playing my body,
sunset to sunrise;
I, his cello and most appreciative fan.
Sometimes I fancied myself married to Leon,
birthing dozens of fat fingered infants
playing miniature cellos, as they slid
down the birth canal together.
Noisy in his lovemaking,
Leon had a passion for cannons
inherited from his mother's side of the family
and dating back to the Spanish Wars.
He insisted on playing a tape of the 1812,
cannon section, of course,
through our open window,
yelling Ho LA at the top of his lungs
and plunging deep inside me,
before he spewed
in time to that black steely
pow pow pow
at the end.
When I turned sixteen,
Leon married a flat-chested violinist,
moved away in a great rush
of baggage and loud kisses.
I developed a crush on a boy down the block.
Tommy played snare drum in the marching band
and looked like a young Al Pacino.
Despite all of my attempts to entice,
Tommy never tried anything more
than thrusting his tongue
down my throat and touching
one breast on our porch,
moths circling the light above us,
and Ma Nature thundering disapproval
with flashes of yellow
at the foot of our suddenly silent street.
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Ella
lives in Baltimore, MD as the proverbial "woman who collects
cats." She has scribbled notes others insist on calling poems for 3
years. Words published/upcoming in Wicked Alice, MiPo~Print, Ink
[Magazine], Spacebreather, Epiphany Magazine, Writer's Hood, Survivor
Wit, The James River Poetry Review, Sometimes I Sleep with the Moon,
SaucyVox, Literati Review, Writer's Cabaret and others. Ella howls at
the moon as a singer and is known to break into Billie Holiday tunes at
the least appropriate moments. More of Ella's work can be seen at
Invoking the Serpent: http://thehiss.net
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Pris
Campbell began writing poetry in the fall of 1999 and has been published
(or has poems pending publication) in a number of print and online
publications, including Limestone Circle, Blackmail Press, The Dakota
House, Muses Kiss, Peshekee River Poets, MiPo Weekly and Digital, Lotus
Blooms, The Dead Mule, and three Anthologies. She recently tied for
Poet of the Year in the Poetry Board League competions. Previously
a Clinical Psychologist and sailor/traveler, CFIDS has forced her
to temporarily park her vagabond shoes. She now fancies herself a
mermaid with a waterproof pen and lives in the greater West Palm
Beach, Florida , USA with husband and crazy dog.
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