Just When She Thought It Was Safe
Rent from DeepDyve- Just When She Thought It Was Safe
Mark also the numerous land sharks who are on the watch the moment the young creatures turn into the bye streets that lead to their homes, to seize the opportunity to insult them, or engage them perhaps in conversation—and the result is ruin.
–The New York Herald, January 30, 1839
A convent girl, she knew the power of cleanthoughts and thought them, thumbed them like amuletsin the reticule of her mind. She was smockedlinen and cakes of soap until she saw [End Page 61]
the land shark on the prowl with his whiteteeth and whingding promises and splashof isosceles handkerchief. He knew what girlshide in their reticules. He had the advantage.
The land shark never comes empty handed.
Or so he says.
The land shark is friends with the girls from the Candygram factory. He whispers, Oh nougat, oh toffee, in their ears, Oh fudge, oh buttercream, oh jelly, into the curlicues of their ears, his soft words nudging each honeyed cornucopia, each sugared nautilus. The girls from the Candygram factory make a map of flavors and shapes, rounded and mounded and oblong and cherry filled. The land shark doesn't like surprises.
The land shark schleps a tool for every emergency. Telephone man, he says and talks a long line, a smooth line, a party line. His voice is moist with anticipation. He has massaged Pond's Cold Cream into his voice. His message has no wrinkles.
The land shark is light fingered. He lifts an honest passion, polishes it, and buttons it inside his shirt pocket. Later he will pass it off as his own. He knows that the way to a girl's heart is through her passion.
The land shark's wallet is an accordion of membership. He is a Jacobin, a Jacobite, a jack-in-the-pulpit. He meets with the Carbonari in the soot-strewn back alleys of the night. He is a Tory, a Whig, a Teamster, a Wobbly, a scab. He has embezzled the dreams of a Rosicrucian, a transcendentalist, a clairvoyant, a seamstress, and a lady of Spain. He wishes they all could be California girls.
The land shark is playful. He sends his card with a message: Quand? Où? Combien? She forgets the nuns. She forgets [End Page 62] mamma with her black shawl and her crystal salt cellar. She sends the boy back with her reply, framed in perfect penmanship: Ce soir. Chez moi. Pour rien. The letters are round and hopeful, only slightly slanted.
The land shark never leaves the table hungry.
Or so they say.
And what about her? Doesn't she like a tenderchop, a glass of wine, a blue-veined hunkof Gorgonzola? Of course she sees the landshark now for what he is, but it's too late,
she's ruined, she's ridden in his cartilaginousdesires and learned a thingor two about how a smart girlcan make it, as long as she's not particular. [End Page 63]
Nancy Vieira Couto's poems have appeared in the Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, Nimrod, Salamander, Southern Review, The Giant Book of Poetry, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Her book The Face in the Water won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is also the author of a chapbook, Carlisle & the Common Accident, forthcoming from FootHills Publishing. She lives in Ithaca, New York, where she is poetry editor of Epoch.
