Chumps
Instead of saying you are
in some immediate danger,
some night club or sports car,
an anonymous stranger
armed with a soothing voice is
offering those who adore you
non-negotiable choices:
to
leave a message for you,
we should please press one
or simply wait for the tone;
press star when we are done
or just hang up the phone.
Medusa
I
was out on the stoop that day
watching the swallows, braiding
my hair, not really waiting
for marriage or love or trouble
when I was swept away
to the sanctum of a temple
and ruined. Horrid enough,
but then he just took off
and left me there to pay
everything for the crime
of sex in sacred space.
Flush
with conviction, the marble
goddess stepped from her base
and wrecked me a second time
and handed me a mirror:
an orgy of snakes for hair,
a neolithic glare,
the horror, O the horror –
justice isn't fair.
What
could I do, though? Mother,
sisters – everyone
I turned to turned to stone.
Monster like any other,
I shambled off alone.
No kisses, no goodbyes,
though on the last frontier
I spat three times and hurled
a curse at the garrison
that stands for civil order
and the whole known world.
Life
is a dream out here
on the wild side of the border:
the sun is loath to rise,
and prides of sphinxes roam
freely among the crags,
and three prophetic hags
sit chuckling round a cauldron.
I dug a humble home
and learned to love my children,
my little wisps, the asps.
And
years glide by, and ages,
under the light of torches
and we are content to tend
our gallery of the gorgeous
torsos who came to call,
arms with a fist or a weapon
and heads ranged on the wall
gaping with eyes wide open
at justice in the end.
©
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