Men (first): Eighth German Spy
The Folly
The German Spy
Men (first)
He said, ‘Smile, Agnes. Always smile.’
Serna the milliner dispassionately surgical
Limning his foundling’s looks
She’d felt safe, so ill-prepared in going out
Wounded and angry and oddly at home
In Marseille he was mother to her, telling her
‘Your brows are too low, you will pluck them.
I tell you how girls are.’ He bent at the vanity
Ushered her to the glass
Used a word to call, so he saw, the most of them
Meaning pretty-plain
‘A face with no nose, no eyes…’
She laughed. ‘There, now!’ He made her up.
‘But see what a hard little harpy you are!’
She’d bared her teeth, they’d laughed together
At customs sheds, beaming at guards
Agnes folds wings
And becomes a colt, told to stand aside somehow
Frisking in the way again
Playful snagging the hat from the box and cocking it
On the crown of her own
Gives a bob and turn to the man, waiting his
‘Do you model them, is that it?’ his wife asks. ‘Is it fun?’
‘Have you seen the new brim?’ Finger to her lips…
Serna laughs, and laughingly he says, ‘Agnes, I forbid you!’
She opens another box.
Two years, a river of banknotes flowing
The scorn of armed frontiers verboten
Agnes one night leaves a cab
Fog on a street in Naples a hand
Weights the clasp of her bag
And draws her elbow slack
With a single guard in her compartment
She rides to meet a ferry
Moves at gunpoint down a pier
His nudging hand at her back and the
Clock, clock of his heels
Are lost to mist and she feels herself retracing the path of Orpheus
Descending blind into Hades and no hope
Of dodging His thin, welcoming smile
Men (one)
Men (second)
(2018, Stephanie Foster)