Royalty

Sara and I walk down the road in Sucevita
from the monastery to photograph Moldavian houses
whose outsides are painted with reindeer

and fir trees. Two men in alpine hats
come by in a horse-drawn wagon, motion
us to hop on, and we ride toward town, kilometer

after kilometer at a slow pace, locals smiling,
waving to us as if we were two princesses,
descendants of Bogdan the One-Eyed,

back to reclaim the throne. I wouldn’t want
Bogdan as an ancestor—he sent his troops
to pillage the Bernadine Monastery in Lviv.

He wanted to marry Elizabeth, the Polish king’s
sister but was rejected—twice.
A little killing followed, and a deal was struck,

though just before the wedding, the king died.
The next king nixed the arrangement. One-Eyed
raged and started a war he didn’t win.

In his portraits, Bogdan the One-Eyed
was not handsome, except for the picture
on his commemorative stamp, a recent

issue, where both eyes are open, and his face
is cleaned up. The guys with the horse
and cart aren’t handsome either. Like Bogdan

with his missing eye, they lack a lot of teeth;
the ones that remain glint silver
when they grin—they smile a lot and Sara

and I take selfies with Pavel, Vitalie,
and their horse. We wave to a woman in a beaded
sheepskin vest, standing on the road, clapping.

Susana H. Case is the award-winning author of nine books of poetry, most recently, If This Isn't Love, Broadstone Books, and co-editor with Margo Taft Stever of I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe, Milk & Cake Press. The first of her five chapbooks, The Scottish Café, Slapering Hol Press, was re-released in an English-Polish version, Kawiarnia Szkocka by Opole University Press and as an English-Ukrainian edition, Шотландська Кав'ярня by Slapering Hol Press. https://www.susanahcase.com