Anne Hay

charlotte corday’s spirit addresses the propagandist

After ‘The Death of Marat’ by Jacques-Louis David

Who can breathe in carmine perfume
of a rose garden while heads tumble? 
Grief has no words. A stone in the sternum.
Stone to whet a blade. Let it slice my thumb. 
Red drops on the cook’s chopping block.
A coq, headless, hung on a hook to bleed out.

David, are you proud of your work? 
You cut me down to bloody fingerprints, 
my few words on a scrap of paper, 
while your friend reclines, a messiah 
martyred. His scabbed skin brushed smooth.  
Such a beautifully executed lie. Life-size, 
so the tender sinew of neck after neck 
will stretch for decades looking up at him. 
And oh, the white of that fine-spun sheet.

Anne Hay lives in Edinburgh. Her writing life began with short fiction and comedy broadcast on Radio 4 and Radio Scotland. Her poems have been published in anthologies and magazines including Magma, Gutter, Envoi and Northwords Now. She won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2020.