Tiffany Midge

MEMOIRS OF A WIDOWED STARLET BY ANNE DARROW

The truth? they ask. The truth.
The truth was I wanted to pummel myself against him
like a sea wave against a cliff.
Every time I saw him it was all I could do to not throw him down
and ravish him like a starved lioness. And it was not the ravishing I craved,
pure and transparent as dragonfly wings, no, it was him.
It was who I was when in his presence, all that he inspired. The largess of desire.
And when he said things such as, “you’re the most virtuous woman I’ve ever met
and I love you for it,” I had to grip the edges of an imaginary railing and dig my nails into my palms to keep from screaming.
Simians prefer blondes, they say. But everyone knows, even Marilyn dyed her hair.

       When that last airplane tore him down and he fell from his Empire
       the last vestige of my heart plummeted those stories with him.
       But did he love you? They ask. Can an Ape aspire? Dream?
       I hoped it to be so, but I never knew. The public wanted to believe
       he scaled the Empire State Building out of blind desire,
       but did he? Or was it the view? He thought he was protecting me, he perished trying.

              When we were new, he’d bring me lilies in a blue vase.
              I’d be swept into the jungle scent of his arms, cinnamon and almonds,
              his smile a crush of ripe limes over a bed of jasmine rice.

Tiffany Midge's book, "Outlaws, Renegades and Saints: Diary of a Mixed-up Halfbreed" won the Diane Decorah Memorial Poetry Prize, and her chapbook "Guiding the Stars to Their Campfire, Driving the Salmon to Their Beds" was published by Gazoobi Tales. She is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and grew up in the Pacific Northwest. Tiffany holds an MFA from the University of Idaho.