M.P. Powers

le petit caporal 

he looked more like a China pig 
than an emperor; belly swollen, big flabby 
ass, legs like sausages boiled in lager. 
also, his teeth were black from chewing 
licorice, and he had digestive issues, and 
headaches, and nausea, and liver 
complications, and his bladder had shrunken
and contained gravel, so peeing was a great 
and demoralizing hardship; 

after the Tuileries, after Milan, the Russians, 
the Prussians, the pyramids and Waterloo, 
to be standing in a frigid water closet 
on the island of Saint Helena, penis 
in hand, leaning into that last and most 
humiliating battle, little drops of urine 
falling into the chamber pot
like a volley of grapeshot.