by Sarah Kennedy
In her glass coffin,
she’s surrounded—
museum walls,
a garden outside—
with copper beeches,
a sweet little
pool. Not to mention
the dé rigueur
red roses.
And the voyeurs gathered
around her shrine,
her vault, and there she
still stands, with her
grim grin, all teeth. She’s
staring beyond us.
Mica lights up
her cloudy shale skin,
and there’s a cross
graffitied on her
sinister side.
She’s a marked woman,
she’s bone, she’s hair,
scored
top and bottom, from rib to rib.
Saved at last—
(Buried alive! Naked
woman found
beneath the church doorsill!),
she’s not our idea
of beauty, her
fingers probing inside
herself, her
skull-cap head,
her wrinkles. Her sisters
hang out under sacred eaves,
laughing
at the cemeteries
just outside,
or squat under the rims
of bishops’
tombs. Her lips open,
she has something
to say, something to show—
she is a
translation,
she is an offering:
entombed, enshrined
(mother, murderer
mirror). at the end,
we all come here.