At Moscow’s Diamond Fund
I am almost arrested
for being a poet
or at least the guard threatens
to take away my pen
use the notebook as evidence
perhaps believes I am here
to copy the crown’s massive ruby
or more likely the scepter’s
black Orlov diamond
in order to craft my own imitation
but I’d like to tell him
its owner—the Empress
who was gifted the giant gem
by her lover
was also addicted to writing
the most prolific case of hypergraphia
in the history of Russia’s monarchy
and so when the suspicious man
reaches out to snatch the spiral pad
I do not give it up
do not do what she did in her early thirties
when accused of conspiring against Elizabeth
she was forced to toss her writings
into the flames. Sacrifice all
those thoughts, plans, reflections
to history’s bowels. Instead
I do what she did after her coup
for nearly forty years
hoarding every last scrap
scribbling in every page’s margin
producing stacks of manuscripts
keeping up voluminous correspondence
neither of us willing to surrender
a single word
to a tiny uniformed tyrant
instead preferring
to get revenge
by writing it all down
for posterity.
Judi Rypma has published work most recently in Paterson Literary Review, Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, and Concho River Review. She has published six chapbooks as well. Her latest full-length book of poems is Amber Notes from FutureCycle Press. She teaches literature at Western Michigan University.