Endecasyllabics: About the Women (Ruthie) & (Meredith, Melody)

Endecasyllabics: About the Women (Ruthie)

“She’s not out of touch with reality, she’s just not interested.”
—David Richmond, photographer of Ruth Grace Moulon (1934-2001)

I want to talk with Ruthie, discover
who is this woman, inside the Duck Lady
façade?  The roller skates, thrift-shop wedding gown
and veil, the fuzzy ducklings that parade 
behind her through the Quarters on Mardi Gras.
Rumors of burly, blue-uniformed police
watching over her, asleep on Jackson Square

park benches. I find her in a nameless bar
on Dauphine Street, plucking at her torn voile skirt
and runs in her pilled cotton stockings. She glares 
when I ask to take her photo: "That'll be
a dollar." Her drawl is steely, her outstretched
fingers ending in carmine-painted claws. I
falter before her scowl, her desiccated 

voice, her figure, perched on a broken-back chair,
tough as a folded bird. I hand over
the dollar, aim and focus—she sits up straight,
grin-grimaces for the flash. Then she nods, turns back
to her glass with its Jax Brewery logo.
My deeper questions? They never had a chance. 

---

Endecasyllabics: About the Women (Meredith, Melody)

Half-sloshed since early afternoon, Meredith's 
perched on a bar stool at Napoleon House,
whiskey glass in one hand, stabbing the air with
a freshly-lit Filter King in the other. 
The life of the party!  She thralls our thirty-
something crowd, banters with the men, and corrects
everything I say. Eyes stinging in blue
nicotine haze, I clench my smile, hide my hurt
deep in my sleeve, till Melody—whose sleeve is
air, her left arm stolen by childhood cancer's
rebel cells—takes me aside, says, That woman
envies you so much that everything you do
is wrong. Your youth, your health, your man: you have it
all. Blinded by such wealth, I can't see how soon 
Death will slip his love-blade under both women's 

sleek black frocks.