Poetry Saturdays: Virginia Hamilton Adair

Virginia Hamilton Adair was a 20th century American poet whose work was frequently compared to TS Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Frost. Her first book of poetry was published in 1996 when she was 83 years old. She died in 2004.

Cutting the Cake

Gowned and veiled for tribal ritual
in a maze of tulle and satin
with her eyes rimmed round in cat fur
and the stylish men about her
kissing kin and carefree suitors

long she looked unseeing past him
to her picture in the papers
print and photoflash embalming
the demise of the familiar
and he trembled as her fingers

took the dagger laid before them
for the ceremonial cutting
of the mounting tiers of sweetness
crowned with manikin and maiden
and her chop was so triumphant

that the groomlike little figure
from his lover at the apex
toppled over in the frosting
where a flower girl retrieved him
sucked him dry and bit his head off.