Michelle McGrane
Michelle McGrane is the author of Fireflies & Blazing Stars (2002) and Hybrid (2003). Her third collection, The Suitable Girl, is forthcoming in the United Kingdom in 2010. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada and South Africa. She was born in Zimbabwe in 1974, spent her childhood in Malawi, and moved to South Africa with her family when she was fourteen. Michelle lives in Johannesburg and blogs at: http://peonymoon.wordpress.com.
Princesse de Lamballe
He skewers my matted blonde head on a pike,
shows me the city's less fêted sights:
growling alleys and ravenous back streets
guttered with urine, nightsoil and vermin;
toothless frayed women queuing for bread,
each coarse weevilled loaf fourteen copper sous;
the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingt's shuffling inmates
tapping for alms amid the stalls of Les Halles;
Saint-Marcel tanneries' frame-stretched hides
kneaded supple with beef greaves and brains;
the Seine choked with debris and tangled milfoil,
a carcass sliding into the Pont Neuf's shadows.
The Queen's playing tric-trac in the tower,
twenty guards flanking the Temple's iron portal.
She's raised the stakes, the bone dice clattering
across the pearwood and ebony board.
The scrofulous sans-culotte belting Ça Ira
braces my face to the crosshatched casing,
my fractured cheek arch, bloodied tongue,
smashed teeth, splintered jaw.
Remember Petit Trianon, ma chérie,
the dovecote and mill, cherry orchard and lake.
Remember the hyacinths we planted last autumn,
how we split our sides milking the goats.
'Terra Marique Potens'
So, there were were, me and the wee 'un at my breast, nestled in my sheepskin coat, cradled by the pitch and roll, when a fearsome din broke out on deck. While Tiobóid slept the sleep of newborns, Cap'n Ó Domhnaill burst into the cabin urging me to rally the crew. Sticky with birthing, milk and sweat, cursing the eejits who wouldn't grant a woman rest after labour, I sallied above with my musketoon, legs shaking as if I'd been keelhauled from Inishlaghan to Carrigeenglass North. Through flags of smoke, a square-rigged galley, its blackjack flapping as corsairs swarmed aboard. Snugging the stock into my shoulder, I picked out a flinty crag of a man bawling like the divil hisself, and assailing my lads with a boarding axe. Aiming the flared muzzle, I cocked the hammer, squeezed the trigger. When he hit the boards, mouth agape, the remaining Berbers scarpered like bilge rats. I succoured the babe wrawling for teat and ordered all hands to bear up for port.
'Terra Marique Potens' — 'Powerful by land and sea'
© 2009
Salt Publishing Limited