“At last a deed worth doing. I say there is beauty in this….”
Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler
Hedda, we misunderstood you,
saw a monster embodying
the Seven Deadlies,
a remorseless disrupter,
deceptive and cruel,
eluding boredom, inflicting
pain. But your handsome face
and warrior heart weren’t
sensible gear for your day.
Were you a goddess, we’d expect
the flirting and grape leaves,
the manuscript burning impulse
at least. But the wheel dropped you
in the wrong era, in the midst of
those pistols, and the general
taught his daughter to shoot.
Shadow sister, feel our embrace
in your morbid parlor that reeks
of lavender and dried roses, know
that all these years later we still
question that beautiful bullet
in your temple. And some days
we seethe with your malice as well.
Marianne Taylor is a bookseller at Powell’s on Burnside where she manages the sales floor in the Blue, Gold, and Green rooms. In a previous life she taught literature and creative writing at a Midwestern college, and her poetry has been published widely in national journals and anthologies. She once served as Poet Laureate of her former small town, but for the past three years she’s been trying to find her way around Portland.