CONFESSION OF A BANDIT QUEEN

CONFESSION OF A BANDIT QUEEN
By Erin Robinson

She was an ugly
girl, my wicked
child, with savage
teeth that tore
her will into my ears. See
their pretty rage?
She crunched
their bones then gnashed
new curls. But feel
how soft, like antler
skin, my coddled
ears' wild 
velvet scars.

Or? 
Keep your hands
in their muff cuff.
Finery couldn’t swaddle 
my rogues into sheep. Christened
by cold, our nicked
names sear: Hacked 
Toe, Thumb
Splinter. Pull
up a rug—the straw
won’t scratch—and I’ll whisper
mine in your ear’s raw 
pearl. No?

After my brat left,
I raked my scalp to comb back
russet—rusted—locks.
I wagged the rags, stabbed
the scabs, and ripped
open what was closing
over. My men, 
seeing the raging 
wounds my mongrel
mauled, settled 
by their spits
and didn’t club 
her doves. Days dripped
into weeks. I snapped
my comb’s bone teeth and ran
the men at every carriage. How
my bad child would have capered
to pluck those popinjays and tickle
pilgrims till their devils kicked
free. And those two blind
fathers…
         what sights
I carved from their curdled
eyes. She ne’er saw

the living jig such a reel
as when I shoved
them loose. And still
their wrenching
retched no rumour,
not a gossip’s gasp
of my strayed cub.
Until a black yarn
noose snagged a crow
crone on the nail that fixed
this shutter closed.

I clapped the dogs
from her balding
crown and braced
her lean to the board.
Plumes broke. My pulse
pumped her starveling’s
heart as my knife slithered
up the sill. She flinched—
              a beat
quicker to life 
than the dead
quail my owlet wailed
over once. Her pest 
birds massed among
the rafters. Rapier 
beaks, stiletto
claws—you can’t 
be fooled by fluff.
Yet one flutter 
of that cold crow 
would have flown
my chick to her.
So I chopped

and cleaved her thread.
Sprawled across my palms, 
she told me of her untamed
mate. Forever winging
o’er the wilderness,
he’d travelled too far.
She had to fetch him.
Had I heard of Orphan Us
harping for his Idiocy?
This forest seemed
an underworld.
I hadn’t, by chance,
seen him?

Had she seen a nasty
girl? A wolf-toothed,
ox-broad, crow-eyed
girl, keen on knives
to ease an itch
and somersaults that climbed
the sky? Wildcat-mountain
goat, she’d nibbled
close, yet left me 
ear enough to hear
that crow squawk 
her answer 
to my nursed,
cursed questions.

         She had seen a stopped
fop pepper kisses as he plucked
his rings. All he cast
to a highway
girl posed by an ash
a coffin’s length
away. The crow capped
her in scarlet silk,
mounted her astride
a hack, and pinned
her with two pistols.

I tugged the yarn
scrap down to choke
gall from her gullet.
Not mine; my child.

But the crow had recognized 
the horse without its carriage. 
Her mistress gifted 
the ungelded 
beast to a questing 
maid, and I remembered—
my kit cozied to a plump
princess, a-blubbering
in her cauldron
coach. She caterwauled
while we cartwheeled,
until my nit nipped
her for a pet and drove
her north. Somewhere

on the snow
plains an ice-
bitten boy curled
by a sculpted
lady with a fractured
face, so smooth he ne’er felt
the chinks. But
he wasn’t hers.
She’d ne’er whelped
a natural child. 

Nor stretched
her skin like dough
as fires swelled,
nor split her self
to push life out, to let
it suck her bloodless
breast. To slurp
her beard, to gnaw
her ears, to strike
out at parts unknown.

No, this barren queen
kissed other mothers’
sons. She lumped
their sweet-fed
love as though one more crystal
pound might shatter the mirror
lake frozen beneath
her throne.

          I released
the spluttering crow.
She hobbled off, crying
pities I could not. That night
around bonfires crackling,
while men whooped
and whirled, I wheeled
and drank and spun
the glimpse I couldn’t tear
away. Tamed?
My cub caged
in a wide world
where she trimmed
her claws, dined
with fatted lambs
and didn’t gouge the glitter
from their eyes? Had I
bound her, collared
her with a copper
ring, barred the hole
from which she flew,

my daughter,
by these flames,
would we be dancing?