About Nance Van Winckel More Poems by Nance Van Winckel Man Shaving a Woman's Legs Give it Up Little Blue Heron I Watched Her Go Keep the Engine Running What My Father Would Say Order Nance Van Winckel's latest book from Amazon! More About Nance Van Winckel

Nance Van Winckel Having to Decide Amongst Ourselves We'd made even the flags: cardboard and mucilage flapping over extinct empires reincarnate in the attic. And fought for with tiny blue soldiers ordered into battle by Barbies. No windows, and these old wars dragging on. A backbeat of rain and whinnying horses. Due south: another boy-prince gone mad. A collapsed country is a folded page shoved back in the trunk. The tall dolls stalk among the carnage. This bleeds into the blood. So the women who'll one day be sleeping with other women's husbands are already asleep at our backs, wedged against our ribs. Still wielding a heavy scepter, one queen, ten years later, has swooned across her bed, still strapped into black high heels, calling a man a coward and herself a fool and the marriage they're about to go through with a doomed campaign. Her eyes rolled back. The other queen pulling the blanket up. A rain around the sound of steady marching, and every route out a territory they've already ravaged.