The Present and Future Queen
- The Present and Future Queen
Under four white cotton banners, I assume the throne, mine, by blood, by birth as certain as the circle of life. That this court is small and windowless or my retinue one matters little, all things, sizes, relative. It is an altar, holy of holies, I Isaiah, she Abraham, the knife, it would appear, the same.
My crown is brown; jewels shine greed, perhaps envy, mostly pain. Proud is the modest life, and the poor, once purified, master, with honor, nothing: a truth hidden in the ebony folds of the sorcerer’s robe has been dragged, like magic, across centuries.
The queen knows all the black-wand stories, and I know some. There is the one about the new land, the old king fucking his wife of the broken waters and chewed nipples till kingdom come, a treasury jammed full of live births and miscarriages. The queen knows the pain first hand; the queen begot my mother, my mother begot me.
The brick-red bag, warm and taut as a pregnant hag, wild with the odor of tire, hangs at the back of the closed door. [End Page 742]
Cold, cold day, my feet hunger for it, if they were not bound, would run after it. But I am the Queen’s understatement, disappointment, stain habitually cleaned and always dirty. It is as simple as Tide, the baiting of the hook. Open the silver clasp, her humble broach drops anchor.
The gasp marries the walls, their spring-sky blue, the quiet hall. The body’s deception presses the womb. The priests, busy over the graves of women, and needing a livelihood, crush eggs. I swear I shall never give in to them; surely I would drown. Then, with a gulp of air, I do.
You will have a better life, she counsels, clean. Travel, she advises, before you marry. She says beware of rapists, the men you least suspect.
The brick-colored bag is a pump of desire, its hard artery tight with love. I beg like a woman come to term. Deliver me. Or Eat shit.
Take this, my body. Drink of it, my blood. Crown me with laurel, strike me dumb and let me rest.
The old queen turns away. The new reign is bound to begin, but I do not know yet what all is possible.
Mary K. Stillwell is author of Moving to Malibu. She has published poems in a number of periodicals, including Confrontation, Seattle Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New York Quarterly, Paris Review and Massachusetts Review. She is studying and teaching at the University of Nebraska.
