Friday Original Poem

Zelda

“There is a child who needs to be rescued,”

She'd call the firehouse

Then climbing up, perched on her parent’s rooftop she’d wait

Chest blooming alongside the aching wail of approach

After the rescue,

Pleading, “Take me with you,”

They would stretch open the door,

Let her climb inside the truck

More wailing

Southern, dark and thick as whiskey

She’d take her parents car for a joyride

Zip, slipping through the streets

At eight-years-old

Ballet lessons paid for by her

Good, old family didn’t spoil

Nude colored bathing suits

Sizzling and wicked on the beach

Cartwheels on the Alabama Capital steps

Where, inside, her father ruled the bench

Boys assembled like a murder of black crows

They fluttered to the ballot box, voting her “prettiest”

Debutante, heady with influence

“So full of confetti she could give birth to paper dolls.”

At the Dance of the Hours, a stranger asked,

“What kind of heroine would you like to be?”

He was poor

He stole the words from her letters

And used them

To become famous

A reporter followed them full-time

Their antics filling the society pages

Wrinkled papers spread across the coffee tables

Of the hoi polloi

Zelda clamorously alive, cracks beginning to show, she poses for the photo

Blurred naked staring across the lip of a champagne glass

For the cover of

The Beautiful and the Damned

She was both

Cruising across the French Riviera, aviator affair

Turned to the first crispy edges of rage

Abuse, devouring the salt of jealousy

“Give me your jewels,” she insisted

To the partygoers

It was Zelda after all, so they slipped rubies from their necks

For Zelda’s bizarre soup

At the Colombe D’or

He dropped to his knees in front of Isadora

And she ran her long fingers slowly through his hair

Shattered like bone, Zelda threw herself down the stairs

More wailing

No longer sure  

Obsessing on tip-toes

Shredded skin under wood, red satin

Slapping the marble floor for eight hours a day

The first breakdown takes hold on her way to class

Panicked, afraid to be late

She dives from a moving cab

Thrusting her way oblivious, into oncoming traffic

What a sight

Careening through the blaring horns

In her servile white tutu

Drowning where the street is dry

Insulin, morphine, belladonna, horse serum, potassium bromide

Fat snot spills from her nose

Arms belted to her sides

Where she scratches at the fabric every now and then

To see if she still exists

Remember his dull promises

And who she was before the pain

Too late, she realizes that she was never his

Never anyone’s but hers

More wailing

Awaiting electroshock therapy,

A fire starts in the sanatorium’s kitchen

Rages through the dumbwaiters,

Entering her locked room

She cannot get to the roof

Her joke ends badly

The flames jump, lick and taste her translucent skin

No one comes to her rescue

©2013  Juliet C. Bond all rights reserved