Portrait Cuttings
Queen Elizabeth I posed for a portrait
with a big purple onion in her hand.
The prelate cut the green shoots
and put an X on the top.
In the scullery a girl noticed the shoots,
hollow, easy to cut.
The girl cut them into segments,
pulled lines of her own hair through them.
They hung like little paint brushes around her brow.
Sharp smelling aura warded her air
against poxes, unwanted advances, sleepiness;
(in the fashion of quack poultices,
vegetable punk, and the fairies
who tangle the hair of the girls who go below ground
with dark all around but for their complexions).
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