Happy Poetry Month!

I Never Told Anybody

I never told anybody
That I am the Venus of Willendorf;
Jo March in Little Women, eating an apple in the attic, reading;
Nancy Drew, smartly solving mysteries, with a dad who loves her;
Marilyn Monroe, abandoned, neglected, orphaned by a mother
still living;
George Sand, a writer, divorcee mother with lovers;
Sylvia Plath, cold, depressed, suicidal;
Francoise Dorleac, dead in a car accident, in the 60's;
Vigee Le Brun, artist to European aristocracy during the
French Revolution;
Queen Lilioukalani, the last monarch of Hawaii, exiled;
Sister Maria Theresa of Spain, who experienced the Interior
Castle of the Lord's
many mansions;
Kiss Me Kate, Shakespeare's shrew,
and all of Matisse's women.

I never said that I was any of them
but some who knew me knew,
sous entendue.

Francesca Riviere is a poet, ESL teacher, and proud member of the "Tea and Tales Writing Group," a class offered by North Hollywood's Program for Older Adults, and taught by writer-poet Fiera Mooney.