poetry: Melissa Kirsch - King Lear Considers What He's Wrought

Everyone worships the daughters,
skirts the shade of cake frostings, Teflon
idolettes, pedicured, hemophiliac
overpretties, laughing on the inside.

The boys are corn-fed and prep-schooled,
mirror-stuck, the milksops! Woe
unto the boldest of them, for who-so-
ever shall venture to pen a verse
for a Lear girl's hand let him

wither, unaided, in locker rooms,
let him be caught with his hand down his trousers.

The king is aware that parenting is a loose science,
performed by foglight, and so forgives himself.
He too was barely tended to, was made and then undone.

Who's Lear's daddy? He was a bastard, a salty dog.

Dear Cordelia. The boys would still like to press
a peony behind her ear, pack up her petticoats,
and take her away to somewhere-upon-somewhere.

Even penniless, there's something so irresistible
about a girl with nothing to prove.

- Melissa Kirsch - King Lear Considers What He's Wrought