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LUCIA GALLOWAY

Elsewhere:
A Bouts Rime Sonnet

Powerful lot of nerve it takes: she flees
the agents with celebs in tow, that zone
of meretricious kisses, sexy knees.
Off stage at last to meet her ghost alone!
Oh there'll be questions, then the offerings
of cassoulet and ripened brie. You slave,
the kettle murmurs, and Madonna sings.
Tomorrow she'll be jocund, she'll engrave
initials on the fairy tree, or guess
the words--the mockingbird's libretto. Cog
the wheel, perhaps, call up the hostess
for self-exiled hermits. Who would slog
through this epiphany leaving thumb
prints on the tumblers, glugging shots of rum?

Lucia Galloway lives in Claremont, California, where she writes poems and teaches essay writing for John's Hopkins CTYOnline. Lucia's chapbook collection, Playing Outside, came out in 2005 from Finishing Lines Press. She has work in Columbia Poetry Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, Flyway, Gertrude, Her Mark 2007, The Lyric, The MacGuffin, Poemeleon, Poetry Midwest, and Spillway, among others.

Note: "A bouts rime poem is created by one person's making up a list of rhymed words and giving it to another person, who in turn writes the lines that end with those rhymes, in the same order in which they were given." --Ron Padgett, Handbook of Poetic Form
© 2008 University of La Verne