Esther the Queen

[RiverNotch]

Esther the Queen


Holy men and those who would seek
to wipe out an entire race
are entitled to the same

judgement: the gallows.
Haman, of course, was not one of that illustrious
race, the Aryans: he had no love

for the Jews, no kinship with the heir
of the Lord’s Anointed.
He was merely a Macedonian,

an upstart from the West,
full of envy at the comeliness
of Mardochaeus' ward,

though what he saw the day the King of Kings
began to see the fairer sex
as more than just the fairer sex

was really a community affair.
Sure, Queen Vashti would have stripped
before the whole host of Media

just to have skin like hers, but an uncle had done her hair,
a cousin had picked her songs—Hurrian House mixes
of Elamite Girl Groups—while a whole team of neighbors

not only sewed all her dresses
but also constructed the cedarwood closet
in which they were all kept. And, in the morning,

when Artaxerxes had come to know
the pleasure of chastisement,
his Palestinian counsellor would admit
that, too, was a gift.