the artery blocked? Common

enough, asked all the time,

though not, before, to me.

Add to this one assassin

in the making: Luigi Luccheni,

and one sitting duck:

Elizabeth of the Dual Monarchy.

Then, also, the thought of no

beloved face in particular.

Is a puncture to the heart

like an electric shock?

Like sudden love, or

death? Fear of fears, yes.

She offers distraction, the official

place to send black thoughts,

like an employees’ suggestion

box that’s seldom opened.

The young are skittish, closed

off to illness other than

their own. Dead empresses

can use attention too.

Without warning, or pre-

tending, she dressed for travel,

perhaps thinking of Franz

Josef back in Vienna.

Or her dead son Rudolf,

who shot himself and

his mistress at Mayerling,

that borrowed hunting lodge.

I see her in the guise of

Ava Gardner playing E.

in a ’69 turkey, ripe

plum of a queen.