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Rapunzel at 49 Learns to Dance the Tarantella

by Laurie Byro
Desert Moon Review
Honorable Mention, June 2007
Judged by


Because she was awkward,
the opposite of a spun-sugar baby, a black
widow in his glittering
web, because
she never understood about Dylan
and Baez and how she stood out like the purple eye
in the delicacy of his Queen Anne’s Lace
chords, he the pearl shell, the mother
of the luminous lake pearl
and because she thought his book was Tarantella,
never ever understood-

pushed up against it like a train heading
into snowy Hibbing with those Russian wolves
howling outside her window
and she breathing the blast
of coal smoke and exhaling strings
of sweet gas, the floss of cotton candy,
she rubs against his arm like a spotting
cat, noticing the dark whorls of hair, the eight-legged
slip into tyranny.

Her taut, tight controlled body
just the way he likes it, zippered inside
itself, a dance towards his white light, a six pointed
star, not cocaine white or holy but because
he was the teacher and she the pupil
and because she slips inside
his skin, minds the illumination
of his ghost preacher
in and out and in
and out and through his incarnations
and because
her skin has begun to peel, to shed off
into a pile of sawdust
he blows her onto the floor where she becomes
the grit under all the fancy soles,
the stilettos and the boot heels,
the brave and naked toes.



  • August 2022 Winners

    • First Place

      Sodom by the Sea
      by Ken Ashworth
      The Writer's Block

      Second Place

      Good Omens
      by Christine Potter
      The Waters

      Third Place

      Isaac and the Apple
      by Rus Bowden
      Babilu
    • Read the August Winners
    • Meet the Judge: Doris Ferleger

  • July 2022 Winners

    • First Place

      striking a match in an empty house
      by Billy Howell-Sinnard
      The Waters

      Second Place

      My Soul to Keep
      by Jim Doss
      Babilu

      Third Place

      Li Po Adrift
      by Bob Bradshaw
      The Writer's Block
    • Read the July Winners
    • Previous Judge: R.T. Castleberry

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