The Straightening

Marie Antoinette remembers being prepared
for marriage

Elizabeth Sylvia

Open my mouth 
for M. le Dentiste

the steel pélican
clacking in his hands

I show what it means
to be a princess
by how I submit 
to pain

✤

Blood chokes
my throat as he yanks
each pearly tooth
from its bed

I will never wonder
at the violence
of beauty or its price

Excised teeth
rattle like dice 
in my palm

✤

In my mouth
a golden cage
to order what remains

Enamel soldiers
powdered ladies in wait
crushed marble allée

They call this straightening 
Fauchard’s Bandeau

I should have called it
Versailles

Elizabeth Sylvia’s second collection, Scythe (2026), is forthcoming from River River Books. Her first collection, None But Witches (2022), was the winner of the Three Mile Harbor Book Award. Elizabeth was the winner of the 2023 riverSedge Poetry Prize and has received fellowships from the West Chester Poetry Center and the Longleaf Writers’ Conference. Elizabeth is a reader for SWWIM and leads the Imaginary Gardens Poetry Book Club. She lives in coastal Massachusetts.

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