21 of 30, 2015

Sweet'N  Low

1.
An old tune--you'd know it
if I hummed the first bar--
called "Something for Nothing"
in the folkways of our country.

You can get something
for nothing, goes the chorus speech-
writers quote. If they ever knew
the last verse, how someday nothing
gets something back, they've forgotten it.

2.
So the Prince had his servants stack twenty pink mattresses, one on the other, until the girl needed a ladder to get in bed, and even then, she tossed and turned the night, her wellborn back scorched from the single calorie that burned beneath the stack.

3.
They must have tiled the floor of her purse, sweet
tessellation stolen from every place. You can't
really steal a forgery, says the master thief. It's there
to be taken.