Natalie Tombasco
​

Dorinda Medley Monologue

pop—goes the cork of mouthiness    I’m not the one
for shit-talk but my tablescape wouldn’t be caught dead
in paper napkins    like last season’s balenciaga
& no donatella-wannabe in a canal-street-mink-coat
better dare come to my turf saying what’s what
because sweetie I was dragging   racks of cashmere
around the garment district before you
were a flint in limestone           spark--
goes every wick left in the candlestick drawer
because I don’t care     if the clinton’s are here
I’ll scream     to every pool boy about your routine
vaginal rejuvenations   your needing
an ez pass for that holland tunnel because I racket
every slight with a sharp-tongued return
because I dizzy
as the motorized tie rack spins like tree rings
& I vertigo imagining baucis & philemon       entwined
—gone are the days I partied with alexis from dynasty
the one who married & remarried
oilmen & shipping tycoons    the one who said
“death is always a simpler solution than divorce”
—gone are the days of MRS.     of london socialite
         yet luann counts each manhattan I drink
                  ohhh she’s startin’ she says    & I go off the rails
because how dare you compare    your husband’s affair
to being widowed
every six years   the devil begs for a waltz & I go around
I go around this empty house talking    to myself
to the cat:    horatio
                            what is the geography of tragedy?

five manhattans in    & I turn
Slurrinda Medley    hostess with the mostess
undraping white sheets from the antiques
as if it’s an opera’s opening night at Bluestone Manor
—Berkshires fun fact: these mountains
formed half a billion years ago when one continent
collided into another    kinda like that time
luann d.w.i-crashed into a guardrail    remember ladies?
those moments will haunt you    isn’t this home
built for a baroness?    ​gargoyle schmaltz
along the drive    vestal virgins guarding the entryway?
still—luann’s pissed    I assigned her to sleep
with a taxidermied swordsh over the bed
& it’s just ridiculous    how they always smell blood
in the water    how every guestroom’s worth half a million
so I fucking lose it    wielding a wine bottle like yorick’s skull
reciting    “I cooked    I decorated    I made it nice!”
which is to say I’m more than a fellow   of infinite jest
& I inscribe “memento mori” onto the party favors
as they limousine back to their lives   cameras gone
I drift       ​to the property’s hundred-year-old tree
                                  & call out Richard?       Richard!

---

--
Natalie Louise Tombasco is a poet from Staten Island, NY. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at Florida State University and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Southeast Review. Recent work can be found in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, Gulf Coast, Black Warrior Review, Diode Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. Her debut collection MILK FOR GALL has been selected as the winner of the 2023 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and will be published in Fall 2024 by Southern Indiana Review.