The morning sulks with impending rain,
\nheld off for a moment when the sun bursts through\u2014
\nstar-shell of anxious illumination.
\nHere is that line of French infantry, their bayonets
\nthe bristles of unshaved chins, their eyes drawn,
\nbut of course, to your breasts,
\nwhich they admire or curse or consider
\nas merely another target in a world so at war yet
\noblivious to its most lethal motivations.
\nThe post on which you\u2019re tied stands alone at the center of a lawn
\nsloping into a realm of spirits, where the ghosts of all
\nthe officers you entertained\u2014French, Belgian, German\u2014
\nsip cold drinks and draw lines across blood-stained maps.
\nYou were less spy, I think, than an accomplished liar,
\npretending to be Indonesian and thus exotic to a western public
\nalready sated\u2014even jaded\u2014with the plundered wealth of Asia.
\nSo where was it you learned the Dance of the Seven Veils?
\nHow was it you acquired such a sheen of mystic credibility?
\nLike a defanged cobra, measuring the world outside its basket
\nbut writhing to the rhythms of some cross-legged piper,
\nyou were the seemingly dangerous woman caught
\nin your own pretensions, your cover story undone,
\nyour life the cipher no intelligence service could decrypt.
\nYou decline the blindfold, staring at your executioners as if gazing
\ninto your own abbreviated life\u2014the defiant dance of the single woman,
\nthe half-breed adrift in a world flush with eugenics.
\nDo you also decline the final cigarette?
\nDifficult to imagine that you would,
\nyou who boasted of your time in the opium dens of Mumbai,
\nthe secret annex of the Sultan\u2019s harem.
\nInstead, your eyes glow with the intensity of a woman
\ndetermined to defy her past while scorning those men
\ntoo weak to stop the carnage, too dense to see
\nthe dancer behind the veil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The morning sulks with impending rain, held off for a moment when the sun bursts through\u2014 star-shell of anxious illumination. Here is that line of French infantry, their bayonets the bristles of unshaved chins, their eyes drawn, but of course, to your breasts, which they admire or curse or consider as merely another target in … Continue reading The Execution of Mata Hari<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"issue":[6876],"class_list":["post-2131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","issue-6876"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 14:01:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2131"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=2131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}