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.
