Napkin Tucksters (cont'd)

Napkin Tucksters (cont'd)

       Touglas Napkinson

He wrote,

              the mist about my eye tells

                      to speak not

                        to say     speculate

                  the way men when

                      they lemon rind

              and hay cut sparrow dove the doll

                 that will when rose and dews when rose

                             and the new sun sets      land               

                   then that sun can set

                      upon the body draping here on chair

                             prime chiroco    stays no wailing

                                    no bodice

                     no

              bodice obstrude that bone

                      white meal sift waffle mordeur

                             wisp lifts its leg

                         pretty little height

                                    let me tell what

                             tell what

                      word wells drape again

                        pink the sky this   

                                           evening soon

                             anoint with dew

                                my lip and

                                    nose

That was enough for her. She favoured him, thanked him again with the word she had promised and asked him to please let it be known that she was the subject of the piece. He did so. Her fame swelled. Many began to speak of her with affection as the most beautiful woman in the land. Many wished to see her form and asked to be shown it. She always obliged, even when Daphnes and Cloes, harvestmen and logmen, asked. They would ask her if they might just have one peak at this wonder and she would, without demurrance, remove her waistcoat, her bucklers, her slips and stays, her curvy whalebone crinoline and her napkin tucksters and stand there naked in a secluded grove since she did not wish for all to see her at once but for one at a time or two to take private viewing. If the lucky looker praised her with fine words, rough and ready at times or shapely and learned if a poet or a scholar, she would let each and every one of them kiss her wherever they chose and as often as they liked until the pink in the hue of her luscious skin turned so bright and bonnie that both lay or stood or kneeled there entranced. Shivering.

       The poet, the king, and the lady in waiting had all become what they wished, though the king less so than the others. Now, there is a small lesson to be learned from this tale. I will leave it up to each individual reader to draw that out, but it does concern the general tendency of females to hide the very blessings with which they were blessed and to show them to none but the one whom they intend to have generate family in them. That is not shameful but a waste if you ask me and if you ask most poets of my acquaintance. My name is Mezzdemoni. I come from the north shore of Africa. I have myself attempted in the past to write poems and I have attended fine schools for many a year. My member is smallish, my nose large, my ears sharply tuned and I play a fiddle with flourish and style. Let him hear who has ears to hear.