The Actual Queen

Ma’am, I am imagining you
at your worst: watching
a wet-lipped girl laying
out cutlery with a typesetter’s precision.
You’re hating her neediness,
the squinting deference.
You think the girl is certainly
attractive, if not exactly
beautiful and you imagine an alternative
life for her where she is a waitress
in a checker-board pie shop,
jellied eels piled up like alien spines.
A dozen older men desire her.
The apron she wears is the item
they dream of removing.

But instead she is here, believing
this to be a great privilege,
laying down a fish fork
for the head of state
who has no ambition anymore.