Thrush Poetry Journal
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Dorsey Craft
​

The Pirate Anne Bonny Advises Jane Eyre
after Charlotte Bronte


Jane, watch me close this time, the scarlet
    folds of this cape, how the drapes velvet

a man, crush his musk to dandelions
    and black his lashes to strings of silk.

And I can wide your eyes to the rough
    reverse, leather holsters and sun-bleached boots

that coarse my hair to a tangle of red,
    a thick of fish a man might grow

and almost the shadow of a beard
    along my neck. Jane, it is not so intricate

as your sketches. Changing your dress is easier
    than striking your darkest dreams down in coal.

And while we’re talking, I can teach you
    the trick of your attic twin, how a cutlass paints

with skin and red ink, how to hang a scalp
    as lightly as you daub the meager perfume

on your lily neck. Before you fall asleep
    in that culvert, sweat of fever a-growing

beneath your bonnet, remember
    that you’ve never swallowed coral or prayed

to the songs of whales and young Adele
    seems sharp enough to me, whatever jabs

he throws her way, I’d love to see her swing
    a dagger across his brow as swift as a step

in a reel. Let’s all to sea—you, the twin, the girl
    and me—and build a blue-walled manor house
with chandeliers of gold and aristocratic bone.




Dorsey Craft holds degrees from McNeese State University and Clemson University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, The Massachusetts Review, Southern Indiana Review, Sugar House Review and elsewhere. She is currently a Ph.D student in poetry at Florida State and the Assistant Poetry Editor of The Southeast Review. 





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