The 1st Republic

‘Let them eat cake!’ the mob chanted relentlessly in rhythm. ‘I hope they eat shit!’ she yelled towards the stage then turning to show me her huge smile, revealing her tanned wrinkles and sunflower teeth. Her head swung back, feet hopping up and down trying to see over all the melons camped in front of her. The crowd swayed like a leaf on a lake, inching closer and closer to the wooden stage. The blade of the guillotine shone, mirrored like silverware that had been looted from the palace. That was the only thing real about the whole day.

‘What a perfect afternoon.’ A bald women with white eyebrows babbled to the men on my left. Sunshine burnt the heads of the men not smart enough to wear a cap of some kind. All were cheering, all demanding blood. I reached for her hand, but they were swinging as she was a disco dancer. I leaned back giving her the space she needed to express her excitement. ‘What an odd thing to re-enact’ I said out loud but only to myself. Any event celebrating a beheading just seemed strange.

Booths circled the stage. Selling fake antiques and paintings of drawings done to honor this moment in history. Lines lead in every direction. They served champagne in wax cups and chucks of chocolate cake staining the paper bowls. Some People walked around with powder wigs and plastic daggers, others as armers with anger in their heart and vengeance on the brain. I heard some speaking broken/bad French rooting for the proletariat, each Stumbling drunk aiming their fingers and fists at the young women wearing the queen. Two hooded men stood on each side of her, resting their hands on her shoulders. She wore/had a face that had been resigned to its/her fate. Her eyes black and staring out into the masses stood like field of corn. The crowd kept coming/pulsing forward, hungry for a head/blood.

People just kept pouring out of the subway like ants leaving the farm, they filled the park, even leaking out to the sidewalk and into the streets. The primp, fat kindler of a man dressed like a poor ‘Jacobian’ stood holding a wireless microphone in one hand a bottle of Chablis in the other. He would yell into his fist for a minute and then tilt back the other, pouring wine down his chin and onto his ruffled shirt. His words pounded us from the speaker set up behind us. My ears rang with each syllable of French he butchered. I would have rather seen him on the block. I wouldn’t have followed him into a diner very well to storm a castle. He rambled on about liberty, equality, and brotherhood. His cannonball head jumped with the promise of his upcoming righteousness. He listed the libels against her, but the insults from the crowd left us unsure of what she had been condemned/convicted of, the punishment was more important than the crime. The ignored priest stepped up beside her and whispered comfort in her ear. She cracked a small smile and went back to shaking. Maybe he was asking her out after the party?

The committee of public safety, stood by the steps of the stage all wearing fresh carnations. Screaming about Orgies in Versailles, and worthless treasure maps. Pockets of drama students had come out to support the queen who was playing her first big role. The star of the show. Most of them jealous of how loud the mob hated her. ‘The queen’, a failed/aspiring actress who answered an ad had never read a history book in her life, was overcome with fear. Her eyes filled with tears as she was looking for ways to get away from her guards. Each minute it was getting closer to her lines. She had repeated them a hundred times in the mirror at home and even bored her boyfriend on the drive over here, repeating herself numb. She was sure she wouldn’t forget them when the time came.

I had had enough of this show and the speeches, so I left her cheering and went to find a park bench to rest on. As waves of energy washed over them like a tide, I decided I had enough. I sat down on one of the broken, stained slates of an old bench circling the park.an old women, now just a bag of bones smiled at me. She seemed to be having a pleasant day. Why must we die or get old, I thought. Frisking myself for my cigarettes. I heard my heartbeat in my tongue. I looked down and say a piece of cake sitting between us.

It was 12:15. As the widowed queen, she wore a white dress. Her hair shorn short. They recalled every detail they could find; he arms roped roughly/tightly/painfully behind her back. They led her over behind the stocks and to the purpose of this play/fate. She laid across the bascule and placed her head in the lunette. She knew this wasn’t real, but she still was shaking and resisting out of her unconscious need for survival. She had forgotten her lines, but no matter, no one had noticed. No one offered to comfort her. ‘a thousand dollars’ I read her lips. Over and over again, she was silent, but her exaggerated mouthing was easy to read. The fat man was having too good of a time. He was hugging people in headlocks and laughing, he turned around noticing the queens head in place. He slid over a straw basket in front of her head and even with her eyes.

The young man, who was playing the part of ‘Sanson’ (the executioner), raised a hand to the heavens and like magic the crowd went mute. My mind thought ‘how hairy his hands are’ and nothing else. 5 seconds past and he lowered both hands on a lever coming out of the side of the machine. He yanked the handle down as hard as he could, using his whole body. The blade flew down its track, smashing into the stocks built on the bottom. A bomb echoed thru the park. The people erupted. Wigs were tossed in the air, any drink that was in a hand quickly finished. The party had begun again. The furred hand reached into the basket and grabbed the mannequins head by its short wig. and held it up to the mindless who now howled at the baking sun. the earth shook, as faces changed from peace to war. I looked back to the stage to see the queen, face cracked with fear, being hurried off by the horny priest, who was giggling and trying for a cheap feel from the women in tears. She slipped off the stage and out of his dirty hands and blanked into the crowd, not stopping till she was home. I wondered if she got her money. Oh well.

she walked out of the sea of people like Moses. She saw me sitting like a park statue staring off towards the playground empty of children. I turned back to see her coming. I see fist fights being started and tables being turned over. baby riot is born. 'They must have run out of champagne', sharing the news. 'Dommage/Pity!' I used my small vocabulary to respond. 'Anything to eat?' sitting on my lap. 'But of course!' I said in an exaggerated tenor with a bad fake accent. i reached over and grabbed the bowl. 'Close your eyes' I said as myself. I could see over her shoulder that the stage had been emptied of any of the folk from before. It looked like it had been taken over by a gang of bored revolutionaries. the tents from the booths had all be pulled down as glass begin to break all through the scene.

she held her eyes tight as fist. I reached over and picked up the bowel with the uneaten cake. I grabbed the fork and stabbed thru the chocolate breaking off a piece, raising it from the paper to her wide-open mouth. I stare at her frozen still, a painting hanging on a wall. I am under her spell, put to sleep sitting right there. her eyes open with curiosity. 'Well?' she wonders. I shake myself out of it to see the fires racing towards the sky. green smoke and screams everywhere. mad footsteps run in every direction, eyes full of fear and fearlessness. Insanity embraced.

she pulls me closer, her arms wrapped like a noose around my neck. No one notices us, as they drag each other by their shirts, screaming bloody murder and needing confrontation to feel complete. Our eyes lock like cuffs, now welling up from the tear gas shot with logic.

'What about that cake?' she coughs into my ear. As I cry for more reasons than I will ever know, i guide the chocolate fork back to her parted lips.

'Say ah.'