Letter to Mick Jagger From the St. Paul Chapter

of the ‘Daughters of Norway’

Dance with us Mick,

     leader of the full lipped

      double-joint hipped man-girls: panted

        tight, eyelined,

                        come-hithering.

Have you guessed

          we like a bit of gender-

              bending? Bring your fast fingers,

                your limber derriere,

      Tuesday nights we’re here—equipped

           with dance floor and liquor

            license. We can offer you our hand-

                         made rosettes and hot-

                         from-the-oven Julekake.

                 How excited we’d be

                      to see you squeezed

                         between our

                           agenda items next month:

                    Lois Giske’s slide show

                    on “buttons and fasteners

                    of antiquity,”

                                   our yearly

                                   membership drive

                                   at the Cork ‘n’ Fork.

We’re tired

       of acting 50-something

          and know you

            won’t hold us to it—

               unlike our husbands

                  who’ve forgotten we 

                     were Woodstock, free love,

                         used to want us

                                 to start them up.

Marjorie Manwaring is a poet living in Seattle, where she also does freelance writing and editing and work as an associate editor for the online poetry and art journal the DMQ Review (www.dmqreview.com). Her work has appeared in a variety of journals, including 5AM, Sentence, Swivel, and Crab Orchard Review, and her chapbook Magic Word was published in 2007. Visit (www.mmanwaring.com) for more information.