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Elizabeth Sylvia

Ars Antoinettica

by Elizabeth Sylvia

March 2023

Marie Antoinette never wants to read the news
she says
it keeps her up at night.
Who can livein this world of guns and fire?

Who can live outside it
knowing
that nothing but the glorious accident
of birth holds off the bloody tide?

I want to choose the boundaries of my heart and live in a world of beauty.

I have never desired
to be great, I love a narrow spot
an alpine overlook that’s only minea solitary queen’s idyll.

This world of capital
has made me peasant and monarchclosed loopof production
and excess.
I’ve been raised to believeonly one of these works
is real.

I’ve been raised to believe only one is worth aspiring to.

Everyone I knowwants to retire early
will work themselves to death for the privilege of someday staying home

morning sunshinehot coffeethe promise
of leisure

Though capital tarnishes every bright edge of today

Marie is always there reminding me that we are more alikeshe and I

than I am to almost anyone on the whole jeweled planet


Elizabeth Sylvia is the author of None But Witches: Poems on Shakespeare’s Women, winner of the 2021 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Prize and a Small Press Distribution bestseller. She has been a semi- or finalist in competitions sponsored by DIAGRAM, 30 West, and Wolfson Press and has been published in over 30 different literary magazines. She is a reader for SWWIM Every Day. elizabethsylviapoet.net

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