Today, I met a girl named Tyranny

by Ethan Zaborowski

 

and I hoped I misheard her.
T E E R A N E E
or some flowery, incorrect spelling
of a word that still cuts like a guillotine.
Spelled in bubble letters on pink construction paper,
she said it again,
Tyrant.
A word just recently
covered in dust,
but a dust
from the powder
of bourgeoisie wigs
as they fell from necks into baskets.
Tyrant.
A noun still lounging
on iron thrones,
or atop a fifteen-foot mound
of the skulls of Serbian serfs
who dared say the word with spit and fire first.
Tyrant,
since then,
doesn’t sparkle like Princess or King or Queen,
but shrieks like a bastard baby
dashed against a brick wall
to preserve the word
Tyrant, 
and its repertoire,
 “Let them eat cake”
The slashing of throats,
The stoning of wives,
The mounting behind them
of the preserved heads of William Wallace and Anne Boleyn
and the entire collection of Maori leaders
who, in their tongues,
spat the same talon back:
Tyrant
still marks their purple, crusted lips as it exited
the lips of a mother in the late 90’s
who held a sniffling infant in her arms,
kissed her head,
and whispered warmly,
“Tyrant”
Like the one sitting in front of me today,
rolling her eyes and sucking on a lip piercing,
the skulls on her t-shirt undoubtedly those of Serbian serfs or separatists.
Clearing her throat and bellowing like a monarch, she told me again
 “I am Tyranny”
I fell to my knees
And bowed before her.