The Punk Piper

By Peg Duthie

Behind her pink and turquoise bangs,
she blinked away the sting in her eyes,
recalling her grandfather's growl:
"A line of Samaritan suckers, we are--
you'll be no different, my girl."

She'd had contracts signed
before she charmed the toxins
into crawling out of the lake
into the waiting firepits

but the mayor had waved
her invoices aside, sneering:
"So take me to court,
you and your piercings,
you scheming little busker.
Here, we call magic
just another word
for coincidence.
It was a fine day
for a barbeque..."

Later,
once home,
when she hears no one else listening,
she'll spill the tears in her throat
into the clumps of coarse reeds
clustered between the sea and the shore

but--as her grandfather
had taught her--for now
she whips the piccolo
out of its ancient scabbard,
the sunlight sharpening
the glint of her rings.

Lips pursed, eyebrows arched:
her melody slashes its swathe
through the cheerful shrieks of the children,
its fierce, unbridled sweetness
collecting, capturing them all--
a relentless, shimmering cord
culling them away from the town.

for Marissa K. Lingen