Poetry by Nancy Wheaton

Photo by Jack Hamilton on Unsplash

S’il Vous Plaît

 
Yo, you going to the garden gathering?
he asked, in his hangry, agro voice,
while I steadied my hands, lathering.
 
I held soap, a scrub brush, responded:   Sup?
The Puccini opera, la Rondine, a backdrop.
Yo, you going to the garden gathering, my pup?
 
He repeated; it will be a ridiculous time
with disgusting music: a nasty jazz trio,
a nice break from your operatic rhymes.
 
The mistress runs away in La Rondine, blathering
of ghosting her king lover.  Silence is the new NO now.
Am I going to go to the garden gathering?
 
No, I did not RSVP.  I’m tired AF, not a flattering
look for a party. Besides, I have love brio
to conjure, so I say I’ll casper the gathering.
 
Fo sho, let me know, he sighs, s’il vous plaît, if it works.
Alone, I will listen to Magda’s soprano in La Rondine.
But should I have gone to the garden gathering?
I feel you, I think.  I await in the kitchen, lathering.

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Nancy Wheaton spends summer and fall in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania and now winters and springs in Naples, Florida. She spent her childhood years in Santiago, Chile and Evreux, France as a daughter in an Air Force family.  She used to play soccer for a team named “Las Amas de Casa”.  She volunteers for Habitat for Humanity and is a docent at a small art institute in Naples.  She is the founder of Wheaton Writing Academy.  She has a collection of 20 poems in the second New England seacoast anthology, 10 Piscataqua Writers and has a recently released chapbook, Life on the Edge from Finishing Line Press.