In the decades following her trial for the murder of her father and step-mother, Lizzie Borden walked the streets of Fall River, Massachusetts — a minor celebrity, and major curiosity. She tried on new identities, tried to establish some semblance of a new life, but the shadow of her past was always looming.
Lizzie Borden
took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
Lizzie Borden
went to trial
came to court in grim denial.
Once the jury did acquit
All life remaining, she’d submit.
Lizzie Borden
unbow your head
there goes guilt, good townsfolk said.
When a coon coat she did try
rose up gossip, hue and cry.
Lizzie Borden
bought a house
installed plumbing, waltzed some Strauss.
When she sat at window parlor
out came children’s mocking holler:
“Lizzie Borden
offed her mom
with a hatchet and aplomb.
Though the deed was fairly done
next time neater with a gun.”
Lizzie Borden
raised her fork
traveled Europe and New York.
When she danced she quite impressed
theater friends and actresses.
Lizzie Borden
amour-propre
girls on French Street skipping rope.
There they chanted, “ho, ho, ho
Lizzie’s got no beau, beau, beau.”
Lizzie Borden
counted stars
electric lights and motorcars.
Some nights sometimes nothing’s changed
Is from one’s life one oft estranged?
Lizzie Borden
strolls tonight
gasps at starlings flock in flight.
By the town’s grave riverfront
slip of memory to confront.
Lizzie Borden
blood on hands
wakes on couch to strict demands.
When she stoops at parents’ tomb
no kneel nor prayer, no sin assume.
Lizzie Borden
fate betrayed
calls abed for chambermaid.
Most days thrums a heart jejune
Most nights summon crooning moon.
Lizzie Borden
sine qua non
chauffeured drive to Tiverton.
Feckless, faceless, friendless girl
time’s unfair when prayers unfurl.
Lizzie Borden
bids Fall River
her soul-cracked soul deliver.
Fast decades once claimed their due
retreat ere now in now’s debut.
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And you whose face so famously winces
from its inner self, ghost trace of pockmarks
of some earlier you, lips agape, like a corpse’s,
you—you of no fixed address, no idée fixe,
gifted in fetish of doubting and double regret,
you must set loose from this abandoned shore,
perchance to trip upon another more
unyielding. This milieu, this passing second,
this whirling wheel collapsed in tungsten light,
is Rome as Athens was to the Romans.
One wanderer seeks matter in the havoc
of his wandering, as you seek substance
in the doubting self, confiding to interrogative you,
hedging thoughts as if they might portend mortality.
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