Bastet

He lay face-up, on his back, like a corpse.

He wouldn’t speak so I bit him, trying

after five thousand years to wake him up,

pressed to his side like a cat.

He thought himself a dying dog

so I pawed him, suffered his wet black jaws,

kitten-hunched, bent to his huge skull

and cut him with my claws.

He once said all women were animals;

wore each tail like a bandage—

my sleeping, jewelled Anubis.

Made me his snow-soft Persian

to warm his buried bones

but still he wouldn’t speak

as I tore him, my whimpering king,

underworld and underdog

who holds his dripping tongue.

We could fight in hieroglyphics,

lie flat in the freezing crypts.

But I could match his silence—

sanded claws etching his belly,

writing my rattling name.

Bastet pearled red from his skin.