Mary Todd On Her Deathbed

I can hear them, choking on spoons, screaming,

in the shower stalls; the fat are given only

a raw egg and whiskey

                                   

                                  and those who refuse

to eat are force-fed. The least crazy sing,

picking scalp scabs in window-seats.

One woman finds scissors

                                        and stabs herself

again and again. It was the tireless Jew

who wore me down; no one believed

that he followed me

                             from train to train

with his satchel of poisons sneering

as they searched my baggage

for the stolen footstools, how he knew

that I shuffled because my petticoats,

stitched so tight with money,

                                           had become a heavy net

for dredging the lost. And I do not speak of the lost:

Abe could have worn me as a boutonnière

my pinched face, say it: an ugly plump bud,

hoisted skirts and petticoats

                                         

the leaf and ribbon trim.

I remember the hoisted skirts

how his body seemed

                                     a long white country of its own

But it was owned by a country

of citizens as unruly as my dead boys,

my dead boys

                      roaring through the White House.

Nothing was mine, after all. Strangers

crowded his open coffin, snipped souvenirs

from the curtains,

                           slipped hands

into the casket to unclip his cufflinks.

All the while they could hear me

 

                                                wailing from bed.

Every day I can move slightly less;

each body hinge becomes more stubborn

                                                              than memory.

I know how I will die: a clenched jaw,

fists gripping bed sheets. Stiff with longing,

I will have to break 

                            into heaven, the willows

in my handmade girldhood hoop-skirt snapping.

From the book Lizzie Borden In Love, which, after some years of contemplation, I have belatedly decided to cop.