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
