Twilight of the House of Wessex

My biologist friend enlivens
her tiled hours inside the lab
by giving her Hybrid Albino Rats
the names of Anglo-Saxon kings.

Well enough for her: but I saw
Ethelred and Ethelbald—-
pink eyes peeled and dull
like lollipop centers—
as doubly damned,
their vassals spread-eagled
on Viking prows
as if to anticipate this incarnation’s
experimental end.

1990

Copright 2015 Joshua S. Jacobs