She was a princess but you’d never know.
Adept as she’d become at getting down
and dirty in the trenches or the snow,
she had no use for castle, throne or crown.
She’d grown up in a gentle world whose green
unpretentious landscape had kept her real,
only to see it blasted from the screen
before her eyes by Darth Vader’s black zeal.
But part of her had never had a home.
At heart she was a nomad, who could lurch
from star to star outpacing empire, roam
religiously among the vague church
of the Force, and rarely leave the nowhere
of a rebel transport’s bubble of air.

Andrew Pidoux is the author of Year of the Lion (Salt, 2010). Recent poems of his have appeared in African American Review, Pacific Review, and Punchnel’s, stories in FishFood, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and Turk’s Head Review, and comics in Forge and Wilderness House.