The Ballad of Cross and Peale
Janice D. Soderling

’Twas a miserable day, a spurious day,
—for a wedding, a horrible day—

when Jeremy Cross
side-saddled his hoss,
a rundown and rambunctious bay.

The rain pattered grim, but that didn’t faze him,
not Jeremy, hamstrung and bold.
Such an unlikely pair.
The virgin was fair,
but the man, like his dobbin, was old.

His farm was forlorn, the soil red and worn.
If he worked it and cursed it out loud
and got a good rain
he might get a grain
and a half for each acre he plowed.

But there was no call to plow it at all.
Oil sputtered! Oil gushed! How it flowed!

And each grasshopper pump
in its non-ending hump
caused old Jeremy’s id to explode.

So wanting a wife to brighten his life,
a helpmeet to stand at his side,
he scoured the whole state
in search of a mate
not too costly, and not too cross-eyed.

He found what he sought. Elvira was not
used to comfort or cruises or style.
She was only sixteen
but smart as a bean
and she thought he would do for a while.

Woe and betide, as the tremulous bride
and her hubby stepped out the church door—
on a stallion of steel,
galloped Ephraim Peale
crying, “Elly, I’m back from the war.

“Who is this villain and why are you willin’
to take him when you can have me?
What a skinny old coot
in an ill-fitting suit,
with water, I’ll bet, on the knee.

“I haven’t much dough, but libidinous glow,"
cried mustachioed Ephraim Peale.
“I’ll take you to France
and teach you to dance
and steal us an automobile.”

Her lace bridal veil from a charity sale
fell quick as a falling soufflé.
To wan Jeremy,
she said, “Hold this for me,”
and gave him her daisy bouquet.

They talk of it still, in the huts on the hill,
how the warrior rode off on his steed,
like a devil-may-care,
with Elvira the fair,
leaving Cross, like his name, cross indeed.

’Twas a horrible day, a spurious day,
an ugly and miserable day,
when Jeremy Cross
tallied profit and loss—
twenty wells and a wilting bouquet.

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Janice’s notes: “June being the month for weddings and the world always in need of a good laugh, I offer a ballad published some thirteen years ago in the estimable Canadian print journal Centrifugal Eye. Thanks to Eve Hanninen, Editor in Chief and Art Director and her editorial team. It is also included in my collection The Women Come and Go, Talking.”

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Janice D. Soderling has work in a variety of international journals, some defunct, others, like her, still chugging away. She is represented in anthologies wth prose and poetry. Her most recent collections are The Women Come and Go, Talking (poems), and Our Lives Were Supposed to Be Different (short fiction and flash), both under the imprint of Kultivera Productions.

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The Ballad of Cross and Peale Janice D. Soderling

The Ballad of Cross and Peale
Janice D. Soderling