Twilight of the House of Wessex

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

 

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