Eight: Queen’s Knight (poem)

Queen’s Knight

Be your own hero, she saw an ad say

Spritz gardenia musk in the eyes of a killer

guerilla fighter

be the windmill and the tilter

the girl of his dreams and the til we meet again

she twines a curl of hair

Are old selves bomb shelters, follicular minefields…

like tiny graves or tiny caves

Lay aside the razor, spend the loot

the too little too much

of it, on lasers

Or sneak out in mufti

Ask after Artsy

Elbow him for an introduction

Wearing her victim’s money

Wearing hat and glasses and army coat

Stubble, that waits the needle

to be burnt from its hidey-hole

silk crepe scarf, black to muffle provenance

La Perla undies

No touching the cost of her skin cream

Her choice

to disturb, be two-in-one

Bewitch even him, that frightening man

“Wow, who do you think did it?”

[drawer-knobs fiddled with] “Everything in here’s locked up so tight.”

“How is it everyone knows my business?” He gives the exotic in his office

a narrowing eye

“Artsy is a lamb, now.” [flirty finger-wag] “You’re not serious, him.”

“I’m a tolerant man, a man of God. But you, I don’t like the looks. What the hell?”

“Fine. The message-bearer will be direly serious. Does Rainy ring a bell?”

Ooh, the deed is done. She walks to her appointment

Nervous, says to her face before a darkened window

“Hey, you…killer queen. Black widow.”

Queen’s Knight

King

(2022, Stephanie Foster)