Bloody Mary, by April Bernard

Bloody Mary, by HuMAC

Note who’s got to go
today, don’t fuss
about the means,
just go ahead behead,
impale, starve, strappado,
the sheer assortment
of choices enough
to make a crown
crow. They never
loved me enough.
It must be said: They
were a disappointment. 

When divine mother
love wears out, I just
reverse the robe
from blue to red.
I like a flat ground
to build the next town,
city, empire of disgust.
All the waste you see,
that’s what I did,
none of that happened
to me. I did that.
I made that. I killed that. I.

Bloody Mary, by April Bernard

A disturbing, powerful poem.  Bernard is obviously not writing about the cocktail drink, but instead about a sinister 'sister' to the Virgin Mary.  Just as we speak of an Anti-Christ, as a variation the Devil, so she speaks of an Anti-Mary.  "Strappado" is not quite a crucifying, but worse:  It calls for binding the wrists from the back, then hanging the poor soul up at the wrists.  "To make a crown / crow" reminds me of Jesus Christ's crown of thorns and bearing of the heavy cross.  The reversal of the robe from heavenly (blue) to hellish (red) is what Mary, in this poem, has come to, after people in her life dismissed and disappointed her.

It's a fierce, gruesome horror of a poem.

April Bernard