Smitten

by Elisabeth Smith Wood

He was smitten.
No doubt about it.
The grocer and the florist watched
his newfound jaunt and agreed.
The solitary man who sometimes hummed

maybe Coltrane, maybe not,
the one who fought to smile
or mutter hello when he bought his
morning papers was now a man with purpose.

Eventually he allowed as
how he did indeed have his eye on someone.
She shimmers, he told them.
Shimmers, they wondered.
Beyond beauty of the stars, she's
brighter than the sun. If I can hold her radiance
in my arms, I’ll be a happy man.
He kept his gaze low when he smiled as he left.

He’s humble, the grocer said.
He’s a shy man, the florist insisted each time he
bought every stargazer lily in the flower shop.
As lovely as these are, the man said,
nothing compares to her exquisite grace. When I can
hold her in my arms… he said as he strolled away.

When the smitten man came no more the
florist and the grocer agreed that true love was found
until the morning papers showed the man in his kitchen
clutching a woman’s frozen head in his arms,
surrounded by blood curdled lilies.

Bastard

by Elisabeth Smith Wood

I didn't want to want him
just because he never called me someone else's name.
I wanted to snub his squared off fingertips that
covered his winter face.
I needed those hands to feel lizard commanding and
that face should have been goombah stupid or
truculent or a little too feminine.
I needed to remember that no dignified human
would sit on his sofa no matter how the cushions were turned.

I wanted him to be damaged, diseased and resistant to
my music. He should've used pretentious words that
would make me itch to slap him.
He should've smelled of sweat and cynicism or
filthy laundry and
he needed to never reach for his wallet
or my hand.

I willed him to be a lamb, a wuss or just
some fat Buddhist with a limp ponytail and
Oh God, I really needed him to be a lousy lay so
I could move on, relieved that I'd escaped the
ridiculous mistake that he would certainly become.

I wanted him to be haggard and spent, jaded
and unforgiving. I set out to hate him or ignore him,
to run from his crumbling corpse but
I haven't gotten what I wanted at all.

In the Air

by Elisabeth Smith Wood

The photo he chose as his
front man was a sulking virtuoso,
a guileless rabble-rouser
hidden behind a hirsute hand
spread wide enough to
smirk out from his persona.

Besotted by flaxen inflection,
he focused his affection and courted her by
blue light at thorny ends of
dark nights with the cursor casting
dares from another hemisphere.

Be careful of me, he began. I don’t know my
strength in these matters.
Grumbled bravado streamed from tethered
tap-tap-tapping to midget genius gadgets.

Don’t ask what I want to be
when I grow up, he warned. And if you’re
looking for a superhero, a sugar daddy,
a pansy or a Romeo, you’ve come to the
wrong instant message.

But I will smooth stuccoed walls
before I take you against them.
I will call you kitten when I weep in your hair
and every night I will swim 7000 nautical
miles to sleep at your side.

Over knotted webs and inter nets a flightless
bird booked flight to cross ocean after
ocean to brave her hurricane shuttered door.

Come in, come in, she said as she refused to see
his broken plastic shoes. She handed him a wine
glass and traded spindled legs to lean on.

Did you know, she asked, that flamingos mainly fly at night?
Angling closer she blushed and said, they soar hundreds
and hundreds of miles to nest from home to home.