In West Virginia, Even Princesses Eat Pimento Cheese on White Bread

I’m sure she could not sleep with a pea beneath her matress, though mostly I’m sure of this because she also can’t sleep without one.  Instead, she is an up-and-down, all night kind of kid.  That’s how Princess Sidney rolls.  I am charmed at the idea of this “Princess Tea Party,” and pleasantly surprised to hear that fifty little girls all dressed as royalty and pumped full of sugary cupcakes did not devolve into one giant, royal temper trantrum.  Instead, my sister reports that the girls had a great time dancing, eating, and prissing around. 

I am impressed that someone let them use the good china, rather than paper plates and make-believe.  And that Sidney managed to leave her hairclip in through the entire party — princess though she is, she has no truck with tierras or even bows. 

I love the pictures of the little girls dancing.  Cinderella can kick off both her glass slippers, no need to leave one behind so some Prince Charming can hunt his bride like a door-to-door shoe salesman.  No need to play politics for a dance with the most eligeable… this is the fairy-tale without all its baggage, the wearing pretty dresses and drinking pink punch from china cups, unmoored from its narrative arc.  No wicked step-mothers, no happily ever afters.  Not even Anne Sexton could find a reason to send a white dove in… no ugly step-sisters in need of having their eyes pecked out.

 That was a little gruesome, wasn’t it?  Not at all in keeping with the tone of the photographs.  Damn Anne Sexton for changing forever the way I understand fairytales. 

“Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story. “

Why I Don’t Write Poetry…

I was walking along Decker’s Creek trail today and came across a woman speaking angrily into her phone. “There is a rotten deer corspe only a few yards from the trail!” she was saying to someone on the other end. “It’s obviously been here all winter. Your men should have disposed of it months ago!”

She had on expensive walking shoes and carried her cell phone and iPod in a Chanel pouch. Obviously not from around here. I kept walking, but stopped on my way back to grab a few pictures. The spring thaw always unmasks winter’s carnage here in the hills.

The spring deer reminded me of why I don’t write poetry. Here is one of only three poems I’ve let get beyond my grasp; this one written for the Baber Mountain Poultry Read many, many years ago… but never read. We were living on “the farm” that year and never did get a vehicle together that would make the trip.

Hillbilly Love Song – 1993

Baby love, if you was some dead critter by the side of the road,
Festerin’ in the summer sun,
And I was just a lonesome old hound dog walkin’ along that highway,
And I happened upon you there,
Happened upon you rottin’ and stinkin’ in the sun,
I would roll around inside the empty cavity where your heart used to be,
I would roll around until I had your rotten, dead stink all over me…
That’s how much I love you.

One has to imagine the world of poetry will survive without any future contributions from me…

Peace!
Sarah