The Stage by Kate Peper

The Stage

            He tells her it’s a secret place,
only for her. For them. Just follow me,
he says, and she does, up the pitched river bank.

            Sitting in a hidden dell
they lace fingers and gaze at the willows
dragging their fronds in the water’s silk.

            And when he kisses her,
her body lifts, shifts from solid
to shimmer for the first time.

            It isn’t until they lie down
in the loam she notices plastic forks, chicken
bones and the shrivelled balloon of a condom.

            Now the woman understands
she’s not special but will pretend she is.
As the willowed curtain lifts it reveals

            two actors on a stage of sand.
She even cries a little when the man touches
her cheek and on cue, kisses her eyes.

*

Kate Peper’s chapbook, Dipped In Black Water, won the New Women’s Voices Award from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have been nominated five times for a Pushcart and have appeared in Gargoyle, Green Hills Lantern Review, Pedestal, Rattle, Tar River Review and others. Also a watercolor painter, her work has been featured in The Adroit Journal, phoebe and Nostos. You can read more of her work here: www.peperpoetry.com