Sonnet 27 from The Dark Lady

by Jennifer Reeser

“I, sick withal, the help of bath desired…”

Scheherazade, reclining on a bolster
Of sand-washed, woven satins, kept awake
Her shah with yarns befitting to upholster
A pallet of the most discerning sheik.
The legends hint extenuated life
And glory she, by moonlight, sought—the tomb
More dire than the allegiance of a wife
To sick, disheartened rule. Don’t let’s presume.
To linger with her lord’s commanding diction
She could have bathed him in her tales—each tassle
Tinged with strange or scientific fiction—
One thousand and one more witching hours, gracile
And moving as a lunar phase among
The solar pulses of her master’s tongue.

More of the Dark Lady series may be found online at: findarticles.com and Mezzocammin, and (forthcoming) in issue 6 of The Chimaera.

1
May, 2009

Jennifer Reeser is the author of An Alabaster Flask, winner of the Word Press First Book Prize, and Winterproof. Her poems, essays, and translations of Russian and French literature appear internationally in such journals as POETRY, The National Review, Salt, The Formalist, Louisiana Literature, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and The Dark Horse. Her work is gathered in numerous print and online anthologies, including Longman's Introduction to Poetry, edited by X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, and Phoenix Rising: The Next Generation of American Formal Poets, The Alsop Review (which also produces her CD as part of its Spoken Word series), and Famous Poets and Poems Online. Her verse and vocals have been set to music by art song/classical composer Lori Laitman, and the American recording artist Briareus. She has three times been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and received awards from the World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets and The Lyric magazine. She is the former assistant editor to Iambs & Trochees, and lives amid the bayous of southern Louisiana.

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