Poetry Friday: The Collected Works of Susan Ramsey

This one's going out to the ladies and lad-inclined boys out there. It's a sonnet, hitherto unpublished with an honest-to-god kidlit reference smuggled in there.


Crone's Delight


Down at the shop we call them Junior Mints.

Just a tongue-tip of sugar and eyelashes,

chocolate and cheeks and mint and muscled forearms,

broad shoulders tapering down to the hollowed

small of their backs under baggy t-shirts.



They're Junior Mints because you wouldn't want

to make a meal of them, have to hear them talk.

There's no nutrition there, no tendon, fiber

into which to sink long, yellow teeth

and hold on, bucking--

just a smear of sweetness

to idly smash against the roof of your mouth



We stare at them from under level brows

or with one eyebrow cocked ironically

all we want. We are invisible

to them, their mother's or grandmother's age.

We look them over. We are not their mothers.



You could eat a whole boxful, thinking of something else,

and never even notice what you were doing,

until you shook its hollowness, surprised.

Hansel had a delectable lower lip.