The Brioche Eaters, by Cynthia Storrs

A Portrait of Marie Antoinette and Her Children, by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (France) 1787

The Brioche Eaters
 
You
appear 
so
detached.
 
Do you even feel your daughter lean
-or are you already past feeling?
 
The Dauphin fingers curtains
of an empty cradle.
Does he feel the chill
of the empty throne 
he will never fill?
 
An infant flails
against your breast--
the décolleté that charmed all France.
Your lovely throat lacks a necklace?
No matter.
Madame la Guillotine will provide.
 
Lebrun has tried so hard
to paint you wise and kind,
Enlightenment mother, à la Rousseau.
 
But you all look so bored.
 
Ensconced in velvet,
feathers and fur,
far from Parisian riots,
starving peasants, 
and rotting crops.
 
“’Let them eat cake!’”
you proclaimed.  
 
              So they blew out the candles
              and took off your heads.

​Cynthia Storrs

​Cynthia Storrs teaches, writes, and paints in Nashville, TN.  Educated in the US and UK, she has served on the board of Poetry West (CO), Pikes Peak Poet Laureate Committee, the Pikes Peak Arts Council, and now on the Board of the Poetry Society of Tennessee. Her poetry has been published in three anthologies, Critique, Tennessee, and on-line. She has also published scholarly articles on bilingualism, biculturalism, and acculturation. Cynthia loves art history, theatre, landscape painting, and chocolate.