You can worship me with all the devotion
Of a Pentecostal Christian with her hands aloft
And twitch with joy at my gentlest touch
Of those bronze, semi-steatapygeous buttocks,
Or of the faultless breasts, revealed
As I pull down your faux-Edwardian dress
But that’s the problem, you see.
It’s fake Edwardian, you’re fake English,
And your body is unusual here
Because it’s not English at all, but Bulgarian:
You lied about your essence,
Hid it from us as though it were a taint of the blood
And we really were in Edwardian England
With its professorships of Eugenics
And fretting about the future of breed.
I wouldn’t have cared if you’d said “I’m Bulgarian.
“I came here at 11, felt I was English,
“As though born in the wrong skin . . .
“Do you mind? Do you mind if I share your skin?
“Your ancestors? Because I really do love them
“As you might adoptive parents, but the child has signed the form.”
But you lied. You deceived. You deceive us
Every day, walking among us, speaking
In the most ostentatious Edwardian accent,
And I can’t believe a word you say.
You mirrored back to me what I wanted to see,
To tie me to you, both nude and bound together,
With a piece a black Edwardian lace,
But when you look in the mirror
There is nothing but shards to be swept up
And put together somehow.
A vampire – Krvoijac in your genuine language –
With no reflection
And no amount of worship or skin-deep beauty
Is enough for me to do anything other
Than hold up a cross.
You know that feeling . . .
When you bite into a clove of raw garlic?
About the Poet:
Lucius Falkland is the nom de plume of an academic and writer originally from south London. His first volume of poetry, The Evening The Times Newspaper Turned Into Jane Eyre, was published with Exeter House Publishing in 2024.
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