A Seamstress Considers her Options
The trap awaits outside. Its horse, a bay,
jangling its traces by dank stone walls.
With her income gone, life has spun away
like moon-bright shillings dropped down a well.
Before a mirror and peonies, red
as her nightmares, she begins her theatre
of poisons: gathers her powdered white lead;
and black moon-shaped patches of taffeta.
She mouths a humid oath then covers her scars;
touches rouge to her lips, feeling the pink sting.
There. Ready, she thinks (but her shaking marks
the proximity of panic and skin),
for the lamp-lit stage; the candle-lit trysts.
For the age-old trap that men can’t resist.
Clifford Liles, published in London Grip, March 2020.
