DYNASTY

DYNASTY, by Gary Every, art by Simon Walpole

 

The queen was pregnant with the king’s heir.

She wished to set a good example for the pious peasants

and always attended Sunday services at the cathedral.

It was noted by almost everyone in the congregation

that her royal highness exited early every week

just before the wine and wafers of communion.

People noticed, and well you know how people are,

people began to gossip.  The king was outraged,

as sovereign he had a reputation to maintain.

The king ordered his royal guard

to block his beloved wife’s departure,

commanding his soldiers to hold her highness captive

until she had taken communion

for all the kingdom to see.

To the royal guard’s surprise, the belly bloated queen

struggled and writhed with violent ferocity.

Her highness slipped free of their grasp

leaving the soldiers clinging to an empty cloak.

Unshod of her garment, the queen’s shoulders

revealed a pair of tiny demon wings.

Heavy with her pregnancy,

she wobbled towards the cathedral’s vaulted ceilings,

flying like a drunken bat, malicious moth, or blind butterfly.

Suddenly she smashed through a stained-glass window,

bright colored fragments of martyred saints

and jagged shards of glass containing smiling virgins

fell upon the startled congregation.

The queen and the child in her belly escaped,

fluttering away through the stratosphere.

 

 

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Gary Every’s science fiction poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling Award 7 times.  He is the author of two novellas. “Inca Butterflies” and “The Saint and the Robot”.  As a journalist Mr. Every has won awards for articles such as “Losing Geronimo’s Language” and “The Apache Naichee Ceremony”, stories which were included in his book “Shadow of the OhshaD

Simon Walpole has been drawing for as long as he can remember and is fortunate to spend his freetime working as an illustrator. He primarily use pencils, pens and markers and use a bit of digital for tweaking. As well as doing interior illustrations for various publishing formats he has also drawn a lot of maps for novels. his work can be found at his website HandDrawnHeroes.