Mitchell Geller

Rapunzel Explains

It wasn’t a case of Stockholm Syndrome;
I loved her from the first, as she loved me.
She saved me from that drunk, abusive home—
no captive was I, but a refugee.
Her kindness flooded me with gratitude,
which ripened, over time, to something more;
at fifteen years old, it was I who wooed,
and she who awakened. For years she wore
her spinsterhood as a mantle of shame—
now, wrapped—and rapt—by my long sunlit hair,
she knows who she is, she gives it a name,
as warmth and loving vanquish her despair.
And, having rebuffed that rather dim prince,
we’ve spent our lives together ever since.




Miss Remington’s Reverie
Lancaster Gate, Bayswater, 1898

My father was a friend of John Stuart Mill’s,
and firmly felt no daughter would be duller
than one who learned such marriageable skills
as to sing, to sew, and paint in watercolour.
He needn’t have worried, that much is certain—
we fell in love instantly, and forever.
Jane was the loveliest girl at Girton—
amusing and kind and dazzlingly clever.
We moved back to London in ‘eighty-three,
and opened our school in Lancaster Gate—
The parents gladly pay our staggering fee;
nearly all our students matriculate.
We’ve a charming flat on the second floor
with two bed chambers—and one connecting door.







Mitchell Geller is a poet and essayist. Born and raised in Greater Boston, where he still resides, he has a BA in English Literature, and did his graduate studies in Children’s Literature. His work has appeared in The Melic Review, Sonnetto Poesia, WORM, The Loch Raven Review, Umbrella, and 14 x14. In 2009 his poem “Monarch Nmemonic” won 1st prize in the annual New England Shakespeare Festival Sonnet Competition.