Nightshade
Glossy black berry, your bitter taste,
your delirium. Figment sheen, what mirage!
Wild, parasitic root. In your terracotta pot
by the window of the kitchen, you’ve sewn
your dark seeds of doubt. Attended them greatly.
Watered them daily. Overly so. Are they not rotting?
Wouldn’t you like to know.
I’ve seen right through your bad habit.
I’ve come with scissors to cut it square out.
Behold, the archaeologist! How the dirt
has dug up. How thy high horse hath fallen.
The fields raked clean. The husbandry of it.
The sun ceased its shining, darkened mid-day
and shriveled away. Blood moon rose ill
with betrayal. The plant cannot grow,
cannot nourish, no, no.
The stalk wilts, petals droop, red glow
through torn curtains. The sorry sight
of apocalypse. Sad plant, your attendees
have abandoned. Where have they gone?
Was it worth what you lost? You cannot
connect. Spiders all spun your phantasm sincerity.
No flowers to poison tea. No matter.
No power.
What you cannot take is what’s mine.
Portrait of Christine de Pizan in The Queen’s Manuscript
In defense of the ladies we are warm enough
to keep ourselves safe & sound
We are castles we are also the moats
Pretty enough without porcelain faces
Consider Lucretia when you remember our virtue
We are whole without needing to be holy
A woman eating bread on the balcony / A woman
holding berries to the light / A woman waiting
for the night-music to rise with the anchoring
of the moon
Look at us square in the face
kitchen knives sharp beneath our palms
to holler Dinner’s ready!
We women will not be wiped out
We will etch ourselves in print by blood
{our names are write-ins for history}
Madeline Blair is a poet, editor, and award-winning filmmaker from Chicago, IL, with a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is the founder/editor-in-chief of Sabr Tooth Tiger Magazine. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Okay Donkey, Burial Magazine, Libre Lit, Ekphrasis Magazine, and more. She was once quoted in The New York Times on her passion for clean air.