|
| |
In Pacifica
In Pacifica
I despise that portrait of me.
The likeness ends
with the name.
Yes, Jane Seymour, unbeheaded
Queen of England.
No, not of pinched thin lips
and sharp bird-beak nose.
Those hideous wimples
tented on over plucked foreheads
displaying protruding toad eyes....
I was not the smoldering gypsy beauty
of Anne Boleyn
nor the loud, youthful
excess of everything
Katherine Howard
but look what their beauty cost them:
one head apiece.
I was pretty in my watchful, rich-wombed way.
I carried a King in my devoted belly
and a great love for my cousin-husband,
a fondness for estranged young Mary
and a fervent wish for peace.
I carried the scent of my beloved garden
sweet forsythia
nor the harlot’s stink of
Paris and promiscuity.
I was loathe to undergo
a coronation
I did not want to be Queen
and yet here I am,
the only wife to receive a queen’s funeral
and share a tomb
with the Beheader.
Copyright ©
Lacey Jones
|
|