Fox Frazier-Foley
Erzsébet Báthory Learns Her Aristocratic Family's Concepts of Justice as a Young Girl, When a Peasant Who Sold His Daughter into Slavery is Executed Before Her
I never saw her, nor her noble
buyer but for her
purchase like a loaf
or goat
we sewed
him into warm
slit belly
of horse.
It brayed weakening kicked
I saw her then laced with a bit
he squirmed inside, it lay
chuffing for death
he spun within I saw her
twisting in rope enveloped by hot
what does a man want with buying a girl
riding home I stared, bared my too-
wide eyes through the windows of the coach
an unkindness consuming carrion far from road
I remembered my father handing me a flower: blue tulle
petals like a paternal kiss
like the calm absence of need
like the power to say, Hush. All shall be well.
Erzsébet Báthory Is Impregnated by Her Peasant Lover During Her Early Teenage Years, and Is Forced to Watch His Execution, Then Is Sequestered for Nine Months; Her Infant Daughter Is Taken from Her at Birth and Smuggled Away
he was my one pure
carried me
flowers
to bed
away
to the window
to watch him torn
to listen the dogs
to a hazier
hazier
God
& back
here Lucifer's clear yard of a world
to the never
looking away to the looking
glass to brush
my own white face my own bitten
lips my own dark hair my own darkened eyes my own dark now
mine
Erzsébet Báthory Inflicts Increasingly Harsh Physical Punishments for Any Perceived Transgressions, Treating Each as a Brazen Affront to Her Authority, and Develops a Cruel Taste for Power
and gasping wildly
yes
self-preservation a severe & austere art I find
myself fairer with each
artery cut
severed / as ever: grace
so bodies curve & splay
what sprays saved Never so much
as a bath my bright
alabaster basin another stained
serf my shadow my touch my
transforming erase:
they are voided made my own
skin
polished, luminous
as a hollowed bone
fair as a duckling's
first sticky
down
down my yes
the first
fat & lasting
flake caught by a cold
welcoming tongue
Erzsébet Báthory Writes, "You Will Find a Man in Me," to Her Aggressors, and Punishes Transgressors Severely, Even as She Intercedes on Behalf of Other Women, Including Assault Victims
noble the stubborn
horse collapsed but will
when whipped rise & run again
lovely the punch
-yellow petals converting to cloud & burst
out in a dance of breath enviable
finale of further beget
as a child, I held her
many carved faces red-clad onyx-faired
each body pregnant with another
I am the noblest
blow: bearing final
peace the deepest
felt frost settling
ground to its true
barren brown Inside
my smallest
doll's belly: a bullet
plump as spring.
I am the barrel
through which it screams
once. The quickened
click bend. I am the powder
& furnace that forges
the smoke of your
hot metal end.
Erzsébet Báthory, Barred from Attending Her Own Trial, Is Convicted and Walled Inside a Series of Rooms for Four Years Until Her Death
one stone &another winter
air spiked grey by breath / my heart:
sparrows over slate-iced lake
beneath leaden sky. Each
page less
legible my fine
dress torn toneless. What
dusted heather: each colder
finger folding in desperate
unwilled prayer each greying
nail one small
stone and then another
Erzsébet Báthory, Blood Countess, Is Said to Sometimes Visit Young Women Bathing Alone at Night, Centuries After Her Recorded Death
I find myself. Invited: sliding dark
locks nape to collar-
bone, bare
shoulder a lake
blanketed in early
snow & those blue
threads laced racing
fluid beneath luminescent
translucence
slash is uncomely grime, gash common-torn
crime. Slit, that's
better-brushed slice
is sweet slide see how it
flows soaring from you like one
unbounded
unfolding underwater
wing & nothing
so endless comforting as me sliding
in to you