Michael Simms: Mary Jo and Aline

I want to say something but shame
prevents me

yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful things
and your tongue were not concocting some evil to say,
shame would not hold down your eyes
but rather you would speak about what is just 
― Sappho  


Mornings they loved best
sitting over long breakfast
light slanting over them
Mary Jo sharing bits of news
Aline listening adoring 
the sounds of birdsong
they were partners selling
real estate in southwest Houston
during the go-go years 
Mary Jo always said 
sell the house to the woman
financing to the man
and shy Aline in charge
of paperwork a perfect team
perfect partners they’d met
at Baylor fell in love
reading Sappho and Millay
said goodbye at graduation
and as they thought of it
started their lives Mary Jo
became a stewardess for Pan Am
considered a romantic profession
for a woman in those days
and Aline married
Dick a seminary student at Baylor

After years of hiding
they grew careless 
Aline’s husband Dick by then
part-time preacher full-time slumlord 
caught them eating berries in bed

Last time I talked with Aline 
we sat in Starbucks 
looking across the highway once a country road 
where Westheimer Baptist Church stood 
small wooden frame painted white 
with a simple steeple double red door 
a pulpit where Uncle Earl 
roared his sermons and 
Aline played the organ
behind the church now gone 
I kissed my first girl whose name 
I can’t remember the church 
torn down years ago 
now national boutiques 
selling lipstick and bikinis 
Aline says far away 
Mary Jo was the great love 
of my life we would’ve done 
anything to stay together 

For the sin of love
they sacrificed everything 
Uncle Earl shamed them 
from the pulpit the organ 
was taken from Aileen
the music of prayer 
no longer flowed from 
her hands and Mary Jo
lost her family even
her grandchildren were taken
she died asking to see them

I wonder what it’s like 
to throw everything you have
in the bonfire of no regrets
and hearing my thoughts 
Aline says when she first saw 
Mary Jo she couldn’t speak 
as if my tongue was broken 
and a soft flame 
stole beneath my flesh 

—

Note: the epigraph is from Anne Carson’s translation If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (Vintage, 2003).The last three lines are from a fragment by Sappho found on the website Cosi’s Odyssey, translator unknown.

Copyright 2022 Michael Simms. First published in Live Encounters, edited by Mark Ulyseas.

Michael Simms’s two most recent collections of poetry are American Ash and Nightjar both published by Ragged Sky Press. His novel Bicycles of the Gods is scheduled to be released in August 2022 by Madville.