The Queen and Three Kings
after the picture by W. and D. DowneyQueen Victoria was seated, her eyes lowered at little David sleeping in a lace robe on her lap, while Bertie and George stood behind her—a four generation photograph. Later she wrote to her daughter, Germany ’s Empress: “It seems that it has never happened in this Country that there should be three direct Heirs as well as the Sovereign is alive.”
hot noon
a little boy asks his dad
for a fried popsicle====
Momentary Stay
Finally I finished typing the required report due by 5 p.m. and emailed it to the dean. Stretching my legs in the armchair and moving my head back and forth and left to right, I tried to force out my migraine that clung like a leech to the left of my head. I closed my eyes for a moment, then mumbled, Get up and go home.
bluish sky—
a star
in and out
====
Two Stars
after the picture by Ruth Harriet LouiseIn Flesh and the Devil, Garbo and Gilbert lie on a couch. Her left arm wraps his head like protecting a vase, and he murmurs “Fleka” onto her crimson lips unfurling into two crescent moons. Years later, seeing Gilbert in the street, Garbo uttered to a friend: “Gott, I wonder what I ever saw in him. I guess he was pretty.”
lip-kissing—
a feel of distance
from both
~
JQ Zheng teaches at Mississippi Valley State University. He edits Poetry South, Valley Voices, and Journal of Ethnic American Literature.