Old Sweet Song
What do you name it, after you’ve twisted it from here to sundown,
romanticized and fantasized, lit it up with cheap wine and calamitous sex.
I’ll get it right this time, you think: Lara and Zhivago in a field of brilliant gloss.
I’ll be faithful, if it kills me; and most times it almost does.
For love is a wanton stranger, leading you like a lamb
down to the gilded slaughterhouse.
Bleating, you beg for love,
or perhaps love’s dark friend,
who might call your name this day.
• • •
Gayle Ledbetter Newby has been published in Boomer Lit Mag, The Broadkill Review, decomP, the Hiram Poetry Review, Gravel magazine, Literary Orphans, Passager magazine and others. Her chapbook Once Appointed was published in the fall of 2017. Gayle is a graduate of Blue mountain College, and attended The University of Mississippi. She has worked as a teacher and as a social worker. She lives in Mississippi.