for the Defining Poetry contest, the tarot reader |
The Reader Luna Lacuna, not her real name, a failed Catholic, reads Tarot in her kitchen, despises Ratzinger, reveres Wotyja, waits for a female Pope. She serves cream sherry, Almonettes, has a brisket in the crock-pot. Here is your card, The World , a great big beach ball, but air is escaping. You have the world on a string, the whole enchilada, but The Devil is crossing you. Hell is filled with good intentions. I never read reversals she says, life is too hard anyway. I play Go Fish with the children, using multiple decks. Here is the Chariot. Row your own boat. Steer your own course. I go to Weight Watchers every Tuesday. The last card, ah, The Star , sweetness and light, go home, run a bubblebath, play Stella by Starlight, Be grateful. Written for:
This is a bit of whimsy inspired by a small section of T.S. Eliot's masterpiece The Wasteland. The section is a description of a European seer and card reader. I am a Tarot student and was charmed by this interlude in his master work. I loved the line "she has a wicked deck of cards". My reader is an ordinary housewife, no mystic, and pretty banal. |