she’s a garage sale gypsy,
with her cheap plastic bangles and her
heavy bags of whiskey, maps, and magic.
but she knew the names of
all the punk rock bands, how to shoot
pool and deconstruct mythology–
he was myth. mythic. a mythology of
bones. she, gypsy,
enraptured by shooting
stars, lost her
bags of tricks and names.
she called him magic, and
sang him songs about magic
men–they were making their own mythology,
a layered geology of names
and lullabies. she, gypsy
lost her wandering ways, her
herb garden and her barley shoots, to
leather and lace. she learned to shoot
a handgun, shoot magic
from her palms. two dimensional rock n’ roll man, her
lover, her god, her tangled mythology
of lonely gypsy
names.
never let a lover stay the night, never speak his name.
in summer, when the fires burn, shoot
holes in the roof to keep the spite away. gypsy
girl magic,
cautionary mythology.
don’t ever give your love away. he tricked her–
he borrowed her heart from her, and
one grey afternoon, he forgot her name.
in mythology,
eros shoots
the leaden arrow, and there is no magic
in his touch. oh gypsy,
stars in your eyes, gypsy, with no name.
alone in her world. shooting
at a dream of magic and a lost mythology.
***
Courtney Brown
Courtney is a poet and pizza girl, finding that the perpetual summer of post-graduation suits her well. She enjoys festivals, whiskey, and starting ambitious craft projects. look for her in ten years as another Athens, Georgia townie wishing that a humanities degree was worth something in the job market.
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