Melanie Browne- Two Poems

The Last King Of France

I put the kid's clothes
in the dryer for the
school week and
unload the dishes,
then plop back down
on the couch,
I am reading a book
about Paris,
and the last
King of France,
(not the one they Guillotined)
Louis Philippe I,
a hated man,
forced to flee to England
under the name
"Mr. William Smith,"
while the rioters broke
in to the palace
and looted the
place, tossing the
throne back and forth
and saying things like
" Who am I? Who am I?
The fucking
King of France,
Kiss my ass,"
or that's what I imagine it
to be like in my imagination
& they have English accents
because it sounds funnier,
they burned the throne
at the July Column,
and continued on
bar hopping and enjoying
life in Paris
under a painfully
full moon



The Huntsman

I see the
huntsman,
with his axe
tucked tightly
under his left arm
looking at the
bathtubs,
He wears an
old navy T-shirt
that says "2008"
I am at home
depot looking
for a water filter,
an old man who
looks like a new hire
motions for me to
follow him and he
walks ever so slowly
to an unmarked aisle
and tries to read
the numbers on
the boxes in front of us,
on the way back to
the front,
I catch sight of
the woodsman again,
measuring the bathtub
with yellow measuring tape,
and writing the numbers
carefully on a scrap of paper,
the shiny new axe still tucked
in the same
warm spot