Twisted, the tongues of Babel
talked about their Troy—
If only
Helen hadn’t bedded Bartholomew and Belphoebe,
bombshells all across
the Grecian shore.
Her face couldn’t be more engrained into the mind’s history
had it been carved from the Rosetta Stone.
But I still have to search for it every day to remind myself of how lost I am
in a world of six billion ships.
Women are supposed to have black eyelashes
and lick our lips,
and cock our heads,
and wilt into chairs,
So we tie ourselves into the corsets of being beautiful
until w find ourselves shackled
to a mountaintop,
prone,
naked tears in our eyes,
our teeth tearing into our lips,
and our spleens dropping bloody tracks
torn from our sides by hawks bills
dropped
scorched by Hyperion’s faulty chariot flight
caught
and finally extinguished on Icarus’ wings
as he plunges into the sea
along the edge of Bruegel’s painting,
dredged up again with Wallace Steven’s moonlit face.
I am vulnerable to the only canon I know,
even when lead and Aramaic replace
my eyes in the mirror.
No comments:
Post a Comment