|
|||||
|
Words, Panties and a Roman Martyr
I remember my trouble with words
when I slid a womans panties
down her leg
and wondered why panties
not singular panty.
She saw my pause as hesitation,
paralyzed by her magnificence
adoration of her form
and I pondered, trying to remember
the history of the word,
and the high probability panties was kin to pants
I pulled on one leg at a time that morning
she tried to pull off from two legs at the same time
And I wondered about the words plural form
that meant one item,
while she, mistaking my pondering for anticipation
made us two
one flesh.
then I remembered this word
stretched seventeen centuries
to Panteleon, at home in the world.
The personal physician of the Roman emperor,
Panteleon was condemned to be burned
after he healed a paralyzed man.
As Pantaleon burned, and burned,
Christ appeared as a local priest
and healed him
Panteleon was bathed with liquid lead,
yet stepped out unharmed,
he was thrown into the sea with bound to stone,
and the stone buoyed him back to shore.
He was thrown to the lions,
who licked him as one of their kittens,
and he was bound to be broken on the wheel,
but the wheel broke instead,
and at his beheading
the sword bent.
He converted his executioners,
gave them permission to behead him,
and they did.
For centuries the priests said his head is at Lyons
and a phial of his blood at Constantinople.
He was named the patron saint of Venice
yet still those panties remained unnamed until
fourteen hundred years after his death
he became a stereotypical Venetian merchant
a wealthy, cheapskate businessman who wore pants,
that came to be known as pantaloons.
the English abbreviation of pantaloons to pants
considered vulgar by Oliver Wendell Holmes,
but soon became more polite
than being caught with your pants down
as I was, contemplating the history of those beautiful, white panties,
abandoned on the floor,
saw the words history through fire and water and laughter
which the woman believed sexual ecstasy,
which it was |
|||||
|
Lawyer and writer J. Alan Nelsons poems are forthcoming or have recently appeared in South Carolina Review, Wisconsin Review, Red River Review, Illyas Honey, Red Cedar Review, Adirondack Review, Identity Theory and Fulcrum. He lives in Texas and is obsessed with footnotes, storylines, how things fly apart and shapes of reality. |
|||||||||
Date of Publication: 07 Dec 2007 |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||