Tuesday Poem: previously published in the anthology: Women.Period in 2008

                                                                                     Painting by William Blake  
Sleeping Beauty

Like a frog out of the water,

like a big clumsy fly caught in a screen,

I entered womanhood

flailing my long legs.

Jumping Double Dutch in sneakered feet,

pounding a Morse Code of denial into the sidewalk,

so it echoed throughout the neighborhood:

not me, it said, not me,

I'll play with dolls forever,

I'll be a boy

if I want to,

I'll go off and play

by the railroad tracks.

Or spinning crazy like a top

in the grass of the backyard,

almost mowing mother's roses down with my arms,

then swooning beneath our peach tree

heavy with ripening fruit.

Dizzy it always made me dizzy,

and sleepy too, this newly tilting

pigeon thrumming inside me.

Thought I'd never want

a prince bending over me,

his face so much like a brother's

with its teasing wheedling eyes,

and mouth that kisses too hard.