Tonight's Poet Corner: The Cloth Crown

The Cloth Crown
by Belinda Roddie

There was a time I dressed up in a
green turtleneck and a floppy teal hat, and the good old
bulbous necktie number twelve from my grandfather,
and called myself a prince. A stick served as a
cane instead of a sword, and I crafted
mustaches out of printer paper and smudged them with
black crayon to give them texture. My sister
played princess when I was the evil sorcerer,
complete with plastic top hat, of course, and
pretended to be the best friend when I was the
knight or rogue who just wanted to see someone
take a delight in my sass on my living room stage.

Now I'm older, and the cloth crown's been
sent away on a wagon, and the turtleneck, too,
both too small, the tired vestiges of my
third-dimensional clunky frame. But the
"dashing knight" comes to play once in a while,
and the "debonair gentleman," and the tailcoat
smelling like prom from the thrift store, and the
soulmate ties flashing up my exposed sternum. I know
I'm questionable, and the static in my hair pushes
upward toward spider webs of cable conflict, where the
screens tell you that girls wear pink and fluff their lashes to
catch the rain gently above their irises, and
boys kiss the water right off and make ladies keel over
from the very weight of their pomp. But I

digest the semi-solid shades of the world in
two ways: With a

crazy straw and a three-pronged fork, and on a
juvenile front, it's daring to consume the material
whiplash of the suburban stigma of "butch." But I'm not
"butch." I'm a dapper who doffs four different
styles of men's hats from the eighteen hundreds onward,
who wants to slip a ring on a princess's finger
with the smiles concealed under her collar, where the
six-year-old prince bows to the applauding fireplace.