Monday, December 8, 2014

poem || Jeff Harrison

Portrait Of Queen Nab With A Broken Neck

eyes, closer play the better part face,
there nature - or - they, the faces,
wore little else in the spot above the neck
where the undivided appears and she
arose on - or - like the wave that changed
the young to scaffold occupants, it wasn't
too long ago they were reaching for clothes
while spitting their teeth out, that time, they
claim, seems extraordinary in dusk, while in
daytime seems but familiar as rodents
the first victim of their plague was discovered
vomiting three dresses - red, white, & black -
these are the clothes they tried to nab
on the way to the scaffold, it was an honor,
she said, to be the first one prognosticating cold
but gloire passes, passes past even the wildest ever
who occupied the scaffold, the common held their
own, even when her breath dropped beneath them

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