by Kate Polak
for Nell Gwyn
“I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five-and-twenty”
-Florimel, The Maiden Queen, by John Dryden
You thought you couldn’t know, and so you never
did. I was born under every sign, and everyone
who loves me loves a mystery. Not that I made it hard
to be known, smile like a feather bobbing in a hat, wit
so I couldn’t play it straight.
I was but one man’s whore.
That bitch thought she had me, tossing “slut” like “shit”
like I weren’t raised in both.
Oh, takes me back: twilight
with Aphra, dosing Moll’s drink with morning glory root
and waiting for the bedchamber to explode. Charles was
not amused, but he
still made my bed to lie in. Perhaps
that’s not wholly true, and when I made of myself a man,
then found myself a man, a beast like the center of flame
moving over a hatching
egg. Nay to “wife,” that dulling
path to oblivion—no ring to stay my hand for what I’m
reaching towards, lived as many lives as a woman could
and made them feel me, even if they didn’t know what
to make of me. At least I was in on the grand joke.
***
Kate Polak is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work has recently appeared in DIAGRAM, Miracle Monocle, McSweeney’s, Drunk Monkeys, Moria, and Inverted Syntax, who nominated her for “Best of the Net.” She lives in south Florida with her familiars and aspires to a swamp hermitage.
Comments