IN THE SNOOKER ROOM
Prince Dipendra murdered his parents, the King and Queen of Nepal and eight other members of the Royal family. Devyani Rana was the woman he wished to marry.
Those few minutes are etched in my brain, as if I scratched
them into my arms, recut them with a razor blade
before the wounds could heal.
Now, except when I lie down and guilt dreams don’t insinuate,
sleeping or waking are no different.
in the snooker room he wears black army boots
a camouflage jacket and vest drunk and high
he staggers around holding a sub-machine gun
and an assault rifle
If I was allowed into the Royal Palace
I could have prevented it.
We were forced to sneak around.
I had too much Indian blood. Ranas serve royals.
They don’t marry would be kings.
screaming acrid smell of gun powder
people falling blood oozing smatterings of brain tissue
bits of glass bangles fragments of jaws
I would have taken his face in my hands, and said, I love you,
I will always love you, put those weapons down, darling,
they are not toys.
Dipendra would have acquiesced. All that self-loathing
would have slid off his shoulders, as we wept,
he would have covered my face with kisses.
WIND FREEZES TREES IN TORTURED POSITIONS
Esalen, Big Sur, 1980
She imagines mind crouching on one folding chair
heart enthroned in the other
as she moves back and forth
between the two
mind saying, don’t
heart saying, do
encounter yet another man
But this one, like her father
will not accept her
This man will say, You’re too thin
your breasts too small
Willa Schneberg is a poet, essayist, visual artist, curator and psychotherapist in private practice. She has authored five poetry collections including: Box Poems (Alice James Books); In The Margins of The World, recipient of the Oregon Book Award, Storytelling in Cambodia, (Calyx Books), and Rending the Garment. Willa has read at the Library of Congress, has been a fellow at Yaddo and MacDowell, and poems were on the Writer’s Almanac. Work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals, including: American Poetry Review; Salmagundi, Poet Lore; Bellevue Literary Review, and Psychohistory Review. “The Naked Room,” in which these poems are included, is forthcoming form Broadstone Books.