after William Blake
Oops, hit the skid rind, cruel world
slipped a corkscrewy peel
of it’s-about-time.
Spirits high, royalty flung itself wide
open upon its own unhinges & by a splinter
of chance that night I rose, my first foot
received into a golden glassyeyed
slingback pump, slick as princeling himself & the moon\
by its half & half-
again measures recalculating what brass
tarnish or shine
he & his might take to me & mine.
Heels, toes, how didn’t both poor stepsisters flail
tipsy & lose
their balances, bloody-shod & blind!
Remember the cornfield listening?– nick
of the worm in the rolypoly
pumpkin’s undercarriage?
Sooner or later a watched
wedding boils.