Monday, March 23, 2015

STATIC CHARACTER

Substantive as she appears—
to clutch
with tight glovefingers

jewel-crusted cane tops and white 
tea cups—
while seated 

slanted smartly
in pleated reams of gilded velvet, draped 
loose—so as not to hide,

but rather highlight
each principled wrinkle—and dispensing, quite
even-handedly,

impeccably-
timed and great age-
ripened witticisms, very specifically 

when and however she 
pleases
to trill them out to attendant purple parlors;

the poor 
old 
Dowager-Countess persists 

nevertheless—poor,
impoverished, starving
for attention;

for no company present 
actually hears 
or heeds her rich declarations, caked and 

heaped 
together so incredibly densely 
as they are—word

by 
thick luscious 
beautifully embellished British word—

into such decadent piles
of caramelized
profiteroles 

of sentences—
each filled to near-
bursting with such devilishly sticky 

gooey creamy filling—
that no polite guest
could rightly ingest 

more than 
one or 
two of them in a sitting.