The Swordsman from Calais

Two parting gifts the king gave to me.
First, my sentence– he spared me from the flames
to which a woman traitor must be condemned,
granted me the boon of manly beheading.
My gracious lord then changed the instrument:
not the English axe, which hacked away
the quaking shoulders as often as the neck,
but a noble French sword in an expert hand.
Yes, my husband king was merciful.
So kind was he, so great his love, that he sent
to Calais for the swordsman before my trial
had started, days before my sentence was read
to noblemen who would not meet my eyes.

A cold May morning; my breath curdled
like words I could not speak. A man in black,
his face hooded, waited upon the scaffold
beside the White Tower. A mad thought–
it is Henry in disguise, come
to deliver the blow himself, to make certain–
before I calmed myself, remembering
his figure had not been so lean in years.
So cold, that day. Oh, my only love.
I climbed the stairs and gave my little speech;
the people strained to hear. My ladies took
my ermine cloak, tucked my flying hair
beneath a cap. Someone tied a cloth
across my eyes. A pause, a breath of air.
Silently, the swordsman did his work.

And then went home. Crossing the English Channel,
he watched the waves, like fields of spring rye,
and hefted his weighty purse. Ashore in Calais,
he breathed deep the smells of salt and fish,
smoke from dockside markets where women sold
watery beer, bread, roasted oysters.
A seagull pecking a dead cat’s eyes
met the tip of his boot. At home, his wife
was sitting underneath the chestnut tree,
squeezing whey from a bowl of cheese in her lap
and watching the children play with a leather ball.
She smiled to see him, her brown cheeks flushing pink.
He kissed them each in turn, his daughter, his sons.
Inside the house, he put away his hood,
rubbed his spotless sword with flaxseed oil,
and nestled it within its wooden rack,
high and safe, out of children’s reach.
How tired he must have been, craving sleep;
yet turned from his bed, joined his family
beneath the sun-struck chestnut tree, beside
a trellis of climbing roses yet to bloom.

—

This selection comes from Juliana Gray’s chapbook Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve, available from Winged City Press. Purchase your copy here!

Juliana Gray is the author of the poetry collections Roleplay and Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve, which won the 2013 Winged City Chapbook Press poetry chapbook contest.  Recent poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from PMS: poemmemoirstory, Tupelo Quarterly, Unsplendid, and elsewhere.  An Alabama native, she lives in western New York and is an associate professor of English at Alfred University.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

Her Daughter

My red-haired child, my rosy disappointment,
from birth she was an error in the script.
We were young, I said, strong as lions;
we’d fill the nursery with blue-eyed brothers.
Henry frowned and would not hold her. The jousts
were cancelled. The royal birth announcement letters,
already written, had to be revised:
two curving lines, like inky tears, squeezed
into the emptiness that followed “prince.”

—

This selection comes from Juliana Gray’s chapbook Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve, available from Winged City Press. Purchase your copy here!

Juliana Gray is the author of the poetry collections Roleplay and Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve, which won the 2013 Winged City Chapbook Press poetry chapbook contest.  Recent poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from PMS: poemmemoirstory, Tupelo Quarterly, Unsplendid, and elsewhere.  An Alabama native, she lives in western New York and is an associate professor of English at Alfred University.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

His Tenderness

We’d ride like summer lightning, chasing game
on horses matching stride and hot breath,
and when he plunged the huntsman’s killing dagger
through a hart and showed his crimsoned hands,
my lips would part, hungry to lick them clean.
He liked that I was fearless, like a man.
He gave me gifts, a bow and shooting glove;
I gave a set of Pyrenean spears,
engraved and silver-handled, for hunting boar.
Once, a young greyhound of mine went mad
and killed a yeoman’s cow. Amused, we watched
the men fighting to pull the beasts apart.
A page tossed some coins to pay the farmer
and on we rode, my hound with carmine paws,
shreds of flesh dangling from its teeth.

Yet for all this bloody sport, my lord
was tender. Once, walking out from Mass,
we found a sparrow killed against a window.
Henry knelt, gentle as a mother,
and draped a linen napkin over it,
to hide from me its cleanly broken neck.

—

This selection comes from Juliana Gray’s chapbook Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve, available from Winged City Press. Purchase your copy here!

Juliana Gray is the author of the poetry collections Roleplay and Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve, which won the 2013 Winged City Chapbook Press poetry chapbook contest.  Recent poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from PMS: poemmemoirstory, Tupelo Quarterly, Unsplendid, and elsewhere.  An Alabama native, she lives in western New York and is an associate professor of English at Alfred University.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

 

Courtship

A week might pass without a word, and then
I would be seized, pulled behind an arras
and kissed as if he sought to smother me.
Passing by in company, he’d nod,
greet me courteously, and let his hand
brush my skirt as if by accident.
His hands– I studied them, keeping my eyes
downcast in modesty– how brown and strong!
How well they fit around my waist in a dance,
the only time when I could meet his eyes,
imagining myself the golden flame
that sparked within them. I could not get enough
of dancing! His touch, his face, his legs sleek
and stallion-strong, his breath upon my neck.
An entire year, we loved in secret, wild
to marry, to fill the halls with English sons.
That year, I felt alive at every step,
at every pulse of my body’s quickening blood.

But that’s a lie– at court, there are no secrets.
Though Henry’s troubled soul, he said, was cause
to seek divorce; though Wolsey nourished talk
of French princesses; despite these tales,
I saw how Katherine bit her sallow cheeks
when I was near. Mary smirked, and George
recalculated his worth with every note
that he delivered. The truth; a lie; no matter.
That year, we burned and suffered, fever-struck,
concealing our contagion, blazing bright
where every eye pretended not to see.

—

This selection comes from Juliana Gray’s chapbook Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve, available from Winged City Press. Purchase your copy here!

Juliana Gray is the author of the poetry collections Roleplay and Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve, which won the 2013 Winged City Chapbook Press poetry chapbook contest.  Recent poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from PMS: poemmemoirstory, Tupelo Quarterly, Unsplendid, and elsewhere.  An Alabama native, she lives in western New York and is an associate professor of English at Alfred University.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.

Beginning

It began with a touch. It began with two bodies.
And so, it is a very old story.
Breath, flesh, the hot blood beneath
the skin–

                 At court, so much of a woman’s body
is public. Anyone may take her hand,
clutch her waist in a dance, run his thumb
along her spine, steal a lock of hair–
small intrusions they name courtesy.
We tightened corsets, presented upthrust bosoms
like coats of arms. Even Katherine,
when she was Queen, was not assessed as woman,
but like an aging broodmare, part by part.
Is she fertile? Was her maidenhead
intact when she and Henry wed? If not,
would she have known? What is the state of her womb?

How to tell the real from courtly game?
Ladies, look sharp. Listen to your blood.
I was carrying something, a bundle of silk
for Katherine’s sewing, when he stepped out to me
He moved close, to take the costly burden
from my arms. Holding fast my gaze
within his own, he slipped two fingers
inside my sleeve and lightly– as light as wind
loosing petals from a rose– stroked
the pulsing skin of my wrist. A moment, two.
We bore the silk to the chambers of the Queen.

—

This selection comes from Juliana Gray’s chapbook Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve, available from Winged City Press. Purchase your copy here!

Juliana Gray is the author of the poetry collections Roleplay and Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve, which won the 2013 Winged City Chapbook Press poetry chapbook contest.  Recent poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from PMS: poemmemoirstory, Tupelo Quarterly, Unsplendid, and elsewhere.  An Alabama native, she lives in western New York and is an associate professor of English at Alfred University.

Margaret Bashaar’s poetry has been previously collected into two chapbooks, Letters from Room 27 of the Grand Midway Hotel (Blood Pudding Press) and Barefoot and Listening (Tilt Press), as well as in many literary journals and anthologies including Rhino, Caketrain, New South, Copper Nickel, and Time You Let Me In. She lives in Pittsburgh where she edits the chapbook press Hyacinth Girl Press and is a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine. Her debut collection, Stationed at the Gateway, will be published by Sundress in 2015.