Jane

[mariness]

So in an effort to distract myself from just how much today sucked (seriously, quite apart from falling in the post office, the highlight may have been finding out that a banker in Seattle, Washington, knows precisely how tall I am along with some other information that I don't recall ever handing over to Chase Bank, which provided a nice chilling sort of feeling), I've decided to focus on something a bit different: National Poetry Month.

Over at his blog, time_shark has been celebrating by offering a selection of previously published poems along with some notes and explanations about each. I'm going to be trying something a bit different – posting some old poems that for one reason or other were either never published or published in extremely obscure outlets and only read by a few friends, if that.

This is the first, "Jane," a poem I never bothered to submit anywhere for two reasons: one, it wasn't genre, and therefore would need to make the long, slow rounds of the poetry journals – and I had nothing else at the time to submit with it, and two, I wrote it shortly before I started working at the university – putting my entire writing career on hold for a few years.

Looking at it now, I'm struck by three things: one, that this is a pathway untaken, that is, poetry with a more "literary" than fantastical bent; two, my fascination with the Tudors really never ends, does it?; and three, I've apparently been a long time user of the phrase "only of." Something to watch for.

Because it's long, I'm putting it under a cut.

JANE

That night

I thought of Katherine
the way she had fallen to her knees
in prayer, as if her knees alone
could somehow lift her to
the arms of God. I remembered her,
Katherine, her aging body
and graying hair. The king
lowered his bulk upon me.
I closed my eyes, and thought
of Katherine, weeping in a window
to see the king, giving up
her jewels to an unqueen
in utter obedience, obedient until
the end, to the rules of God
before the laws of men.

Of Katherine.

Not Anne, the witch
the goggle-eyed whore,
of her clutching the
portrait of the king
in her hands
screaming her
love.

Not then.

Only of

Katherine, how the king
had kissed her cheek,
the way she stitched
his shirts. I thought of
Katherine, dying, and her
dying breath. They say
her heart turned black.
They say in her dying breath
she thought of him, this king
that now nuzzled my soft breasts
with his harsh beard. She thought of him,
and prayed his name, still thinking of
the strong thighs she once
caressed, the lips that once
pressed silence to her mouth.
She breathed his name, and
cried to God. A torrent
raged through her prayers;
she clung to his prayers
in her death.

the king's beard
tickles my breasts

I closed my eyes

and thought of Katherine
of her breathing eternal prayers
tied to the king. She never
loved him so well as this, when
dying, she breathed
his name.

I struggle in the bed
to be naked before him. I
cannot see him
in the dark.

To them
love came as a scream.

His hands fumble
on my skin. Sweet, he mumbles.
Sweet.

Have you ever loved, Jane,
ask my brothers, and I lower my eyes
to the floor, gently, properly,
a demure women in demure clothes.
I love the king, I say, and they nod,
eyes black. My eyes watch
the rushes on the floor.

The curtains
keep us dark. His
hands are heavy. I
do not kiss them.

Anne stopped breathing
when she saw the king.
She said.

The king's hands
part my legs.

You
took him from Katherine, I said,
and I shall take him from you. She
screamed.

He strokes me there,
Soft, untouched, he says. Mine,
the king says. Mine.

Katherine.

I am
silent in this,
silent.

Anne died
three days before the king
climbed upon me. I pray
I will bear him
a son.

He has
climbed upon me,
panting.

I doubt many of us
will miss her.

(May, 2002)

#

I resisted the urge to clean this up, although I have so many things I would want to do to this piece now.