Smalls

 Smalls
     By Thoughtlessness Personified 

      
     sausage breakfast up in my room

          by rupert mann 

     emily dickinson
     gobbled the thickest one
     she could imagine each day
     when she was good and full
     crammed with the cream and all
     once more she’d so much to say

Oh my darling Rupert Mann.  I just wish that I could stand the noise and lights and rollicking band that plays so loudly the idiots stand and cry and call and whine for peace I hate to bother you about this insignificance but I know you will take my part and let the owner of the mart know that a woman down below in number 825 is feeling nauseous every night because the music loudly bites.
     Such nonsense and more Emily thought to herself about her most current imaginary lover. Her father had expressly forbidden advances by the handsome farmer, Rupert, who had recently called asking for her hand. Well, not asking for her hand, exactly, but the next to it. He had inquired if he might confer with Emily, to speak with her privately because he owned a large farm with sheep, horses, cider press, barns, various outbuildings and a spacious house with a well-appointed attic in which Emily might spend her time unmolested writing poetry. He wished, he told her father, to strike up an acquaintance with her whom he had never seen, whose beauty was legendary, who excelled at all the arts, and in particular, poetry, and whose laundry he had espied occasionally from his pasture close by as he was riding horse and counting livestock. The various items of lingerie hanging there, especially, had forcefully called to his imagination and beckoned to his heart to inquire after her availability for some brief social intercourse. 
     Her father had roundly berated this fine specimen of a man and commanded him in the future to not make reference to his wife’s laundry (for that’s whose it was), neither to those items flapping outside, drying on racks inside the house, lying in her drawers, nor draped about her person underneath her dresses and blouses where none might see them or make comment about them except himself. And if this thick man – father referred to him so – if this thick man would condescend to be set straight, the beautiful one of the two was his wife, Eleanor. And furthermore, Emily‘s laundry had never yet, ever, whispered in the breezes outside on the line over the lawn for all to goggle at. If he, the farmer, struggled under such a profound load of curiosity as he seemed to do, however, he might be allowed have a look, instead of at his wife’s, at Emily‘s lingeries and, furthermore, he just might find them a little less to his taste than those being breezed about on the lines nearby. 
     Father forthwith took the thick man upstairs to my bedroom. Characteristically loutish, without knocking, father entered my room, followed hard on his heels by this strapping young buck, who looked at me and stopped dead in his tracks. His gaze only removed from my person when Father opened the specified drawer and patiently handed out item after item, holding each up in the air for this fellow (Rupert) to experience. He did look at them, at my dainties and lacies, my sheer stockings and other sheer smalls, with increasing confidence, I noticed. He was dumbstruck. He could not believe his eyes. I saw all of this in them. To my quiet astonishment he even received into his own hands a few of the smalls for closer inspection, ones that must have especially roused his interest 

     Father said then, “Now are you satisfied?” The man simply nodded, but then stopped and asked whether that was all there was, all the pieces in the drawer, and then, when father reassured him, rather arrogantly I thought, that not a single undergarment had been left unobserved, the two of them walked back down the stairs. 

     Now I write a lament for this pathetic loss, for the disappearance to me of such a fine muscular being. 

     rupert sing
          by emily dickenson 

     rupert mann came to call
            he came with his big

 hands
     and, oh, so small 

               heart 
     he looked, saw
       the dismal state of my 
                  bedroom
     and of my very 
             
                  person

my               very          my         every

          

             sheer

     he’s gone 

along with 

                  the flowers 
     which will blossom now 
     sans eyes
             sans heart

                    i 
      and 

  flowers 

                 unsung

That was today’s conquest of passion. What will tomorrow bring? I hardly dare say, but write I must of my own unworthiness and the beauty of the men who come to call.    
       I recall, for instance, Basil Bayleaf. With his tanned exterior and white insides he struck me at first as a dismal prospect. I did have some embers fanned by his outwards. What I liked about him really, though, was the way his mouth in its pinkness tongued me when he finally got me to meet him in the woods. I did that. Meet him. He talked little. We loved and I noticed the pinkness of his tongue and, looking closer then, the neat and bright pinkness of the inside of his mouth. He showed me when I asked.
     “Open wide,“ I said, and after a minute of fine remonstrance, he did. He did not return. I don’t blame him, really. 
      Now, Nelly my horse is another matter entirely. Like sir Topas, I ride her on errands. After dark, mainly. We canter along and then stop and roll in the meadow if the air is warm enough and there’s a modicum of light. We like this diversion for no reason so much as the togetherness it speaks of. It expresses how we feel about each other. She likes me, and I like her. On her back, utterly at peace, with her legs dandying the air, and mine too, and our hair flying in the night wind, we take our time and play to our hearts’ content, and then we sleep. And, lying there for two hours or more, we become one with the earth, our limbs tightly entwined. Nelly, my horse, has my heart now. No man will ever love me as she does. I love her whinny. I can recognize it among those of the other horses in the barn. When she whinnies I come. I dash out and throw myself on her back and we ride away.      
     My doggy, too, is a favourite of mine. If not actually my most favourite animal, then one of the ones I list high on the scale of friendship. His tongue lolls when he has run for a space. His eyes sweat and seem tired but happy if he exerts himself. I, on the other hand, seldom physically extend myself, no more than is necessary for the practical tasks at hand. I write, true, but writing requires no swift movements of hands and legs. I sing now and then, but the forming of musical notes with the throat and mouth taxes none of the ligaments or major muscles. I sing without perspiring, and so, even when I am active I seldom lose myself to exhaustion. Doggy, in contrast, is frequently spent and so weary. 

     Now, the other afternoon, for instance, he came to me at night. He whined beneath my window and when I heard him I opened it and let down a ladder that he has learned to climb and up he came and spoke to me, in a language that we both understand, of his most recent adventures. Then he laid down with his head in my lap. I pampered him. He slept, finally. But then he spent the night in a restless state. I do not let him up here too often. If my father found out he would thrash me. He spanks me when he disagrees with my habits. He takes me over his knee and spanks me with increasingly more vigour until he thinks I have learned my lesson.
     
     doggy
         by emily dickenson 

     doggy doggy on the wall
     who’s the fairest of them    
         all
     is it me or is it her
     tell me please you little cur

     doggy doggy panting hard 
     you’ve become my little
         pard
     I would give my life for you
     my love for you shines 
        bright and true

      Doggy doggy darling pet
   You are not my favourite yet
Once you are
          I’ll let you know
Up till then
                    you’re free 
                                   to go

Emily fixed her gaze on a sheep in the pen outside the barn near the chicken coop. Oh Henry, my darling woolly lamb. You take me to heights of joy. I your lovely sweetheart am. You my special little lamb. When the church on Thursday meets, and my family leaves the house, you and I can freely play, spend in pleasures all the day. You will sweep the chimney first, I will be your special nurse, we will watch the evening’s sheen, then the darkening of the green. Children coming home to sleep, will not rush to greet their dams, for their hearts at evening time, beat no more fiercely than does mine. I in my bed, and you in yours, each to other fond will bleat, you of troubles I can’t see, I of things I’d rather be.
     Emily fixed her mind on her next poem and wrote it quickly. Then, tired, she hauled her self up off her bed and went to the window to survey the grounds below. Who would she engage for this evening, she thought as she looked about her at the moon-strewn field. A pig somewhere grunted in its pen.