On Powdering Her Face, 1562
For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects’ faith doth ebb,
Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web.From “The Doubt of Future Foes”
Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web.From “The Doubt of Future Foes”
No monarch’s immune—Ulrika Eleanor
of Sweden died in 1741—
but Queen Elizabeth survived it, swore
to turn “alive” into “successful,” run
the kingdom like a well-oiled gun, pretend
those pockmarks on her cheeks did not exist.
Disfigurement, at least, discouraged men,
except a few, the suitors who’d persist
with flattery and hoped to be her King.
Ambitious men could not resist the throne,
ignoring her refusals by insisting
women lived for love and love alone.
She wanted more, and powdering her face,
she smoothed her skin to win the realm’s embrace.
Sunflower Island, 1863
They rowed the men across the Mississippi.
A quarantine would slow the spread of pox.
What better way to punish enemies
than banish them with plague? The infected lost
their faces first, to blisters, and while their fevers
soared, the sick hallucinated, longed
for the men they’d be no more – husbands, fathers
and sons convinced they’d known what’s right from wrong.
Alone to fester in their single cells,
with too few nuns to nurse or pacify,
most were buried in mass graves until
the island, too, fell victim to the tide.
Those yellow heads once dropped their seeds and browned.
The wind spurred volunteers to claim new ground.
