The Princess and the So-called Pea*

Dearest Hans,

I ran into Snow the other day
at the Computers and the Kingdom
Conference, the seminar on
Databases and the Royal Records.
We had tea, after.

She's about the top
bureaucrat
in the Vale of Little People
and came to the conference
to catch up on the latest.

Boy, does she look good.
She's still a size 6 with a
complexion like cream.
There I was
looking like the King's blimp
beside her and the bags
'neath my eyes need a lift.

Anyway, she says "Hans is still telling
stories" and I'm sure that's paying
off for you,
but I gotta say,
the one about me and the pea,
that verges on slander.
You need a new tale.

There is no pea.
I know that you know.
There's just so many distractions.
Cedric keeps having his little affairs
and keeps saying,
it doesn't mean a thing.
But I'm tiring of the lies
and thinking
what's good for the gander...
never mind.

Ella is in the middle of
some sustained
teenage tantrum,
she thinks I'm a bitch,
and my sly, wicked boss
keeps giving me little food gifts
and asking, oh, so, innocently,
"does Belle want my job?"

It all runs through
my head, day after day,
night after night,
and my mattress is lumpy
and the sheets wavy and wrinkled
and my nerves send little messages--
no time for sleep,
you're falling behind.

So please, Hans,
no more about the pea.

Love,
Leah

P.S. And for cinder's sake,
stop calling me "princess,"
that game is so over.


The Princess and the So-called Pea

I understand the problem

with the princess and her pea,

which was not a pea at all,

but lumpy

as mattresses go,

waves and wrinkles,

bearable but for the other

vexations of her life,

not least of which were

rumors that she was

so awfully sensitive

and at fault for all the trouble

with her mother-in-law, the queen;

and then, the prince, always MIA,

with riding to hounds and

rolling in hay

and more trouble yet

with the young dauphine,

her daughter,

who needs,

says the queen,

some chores to teach her habits,

like marching to the royal tune,

like patience and grace

like grandmother’s;

and there’s all the costume changes,

the conservative suit for work,

the ball gowns and the opera glasses

and the hats, oy, the hats;

so when the day ends in the darkness

that precedes the day to come and the

darkness after that,
she can’t sleep; who could?
so much on her mind;

that’s why the waves and wrinkles

so disturb; she’s really no more

sensitive than you; just, OMG,

she wants her own roll

in the hay, just like the fucking prince.

*A cheap knock-off of Anne Sexton's radical take on fairy tales (later collected in her book, Transformations. Sexton was a great poet of the mid-20th Century, bawdy and beautiful. And, herself, a candle in the wind.

So the poets say, so the poets tell us

Dedicated to Marrianne and to Margrete who are in Cleveland, getting out the vote for Barack.

I have my own poems,
I have my heart, my moon, my breath and my secrets,
I have my love to babies,
And my faith that more will rise as my children rose,

But it is the poems of others,
The words that tear and soothe,
The words that rip and drip and feed and drink
That lift me up and grow me strong and race my heart

Further than I would have dared or dreamed to go.
It was Walt Whitman who waked me.
“Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you,” he wrote,
“That you be my poem.” And I believed I could be.

Poet Essex Hemphill, smart and black and gay,
He touched me, too, and called
Sure black men to build walls of protection around
The beleagured in Anacostia and Harlem and the wavering poor.

Martin King reminded us that the great men of war
Spoke about peace as though they could deliver such a thing
By bombing us and killing us. Those who feel that war brings
Solutions to our problems “are sleeping through the revolution,”

Martin said. For every Viet Cong soldier we kill, we spend $500,000 to do so,
He said. And asked us how much we spend to educate a child or lift a sister
Out of poverty. And Audre Lorde, who reminded us constantly of the dead
We left behind and the dead we had yet to encounter, told us also about

The woman she loved who drew for her a bath of old roses.
And as Audre counted women caught in traps, one by one until
She reached the fifteenth one, the one with the courage to change
The question, Marge Piercy counted still others, living and dying

On street corners and discovered she was one of those with
The heart to endure and to love, “… the love we cupped so clumsily,”
the love raging and driving, “… an engine of light,” she wrote.
Just so did Langston Hughes remind us of the mourners, who

“Got up smiling, happy they were here.” And Dylan Thomas
Urged us to resist, “to not go gentle into that good night.”
How much did he charge us with, to waste nothing,
Least of all, ourselves? And having decided to live on,

How should we live? Anne Sexton tells us there is always more,
A for instance: the boy who finds a nickel and looks for a wallet,
Finds a string and looks for a harp, finds a golden key and
Unlocks a book of mysteries and fables and princesses and ogres.

This is something and there is more: the sunny days and open wounds
Of childhood, from where we came, troubled but standing,
And with Paticia Smith, “determined not to write a poem
Glorifying loss”

The uncontrasted gray of some days and other
Days of blood and tears and bursts of laughter.
Or as Ginsberg had it, “Candor ends paranoia…
Notice what you notice…catch yourself thinking.”

Of course, he adds, “others can measure their vision by what we see,”
Another way of saying that in our shared experiences and love lies
Liberation. Giovanni said that, too. “She’s our own star
shining from afar her life a beacon of who we are”

I am not a leader, but I know that there’s always another battle
And I hope to be there, following Martin, looking for ways that
Peaceful means can bring peaceful ends. In the meantime, as Giles said,
“There’s another Hellmouth under Cleveland,” and maybe we should go there.