Undoing

But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand? 
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott”

A tower is an excuse for a window,
for watching the enemy approach
from far away. A tower is an ego.

Still, trauma is inevitable.
Gorgeous Lancelot, riding from court,
slays the Lady of Shalott in her turret
without raising his bow. One glimpse
of his curls and she loses her mind,
rips the tapestry from her loom,
breaks things. She had thought
she was an artist, with a cunning arras
between herself and catastrophe.

Towers themselves decay,
damaged by siege or weather. A ruin
is more sympathetic than a tower.

 

Charisse Gendron lives in Portland, Maine, where she volunteers at the Mechanics' Hall library and teaches remotely for Coastal Senior College in Newcastle. Her work has appeared in many literary journals including Anomaly Poetry, Blood & Bourbon, Empyrean, Feral, and Paris Lit Up Gazette. She holds a doctorate in English from the University of Connecticut.