I stand in
the bedroom, sweatless,
admit to the
dagger,
the rage and
the kids
who looked
like you; had the eye
of the cool
Aegean
with
Argonaut bravado and your sticky blood
boiling
their little black hearts.
My wriggling
babies.
I taught
them to gnaw on the blade
til their
little throats roared
like mad
devils, howling, my lullabied young.
Your sins
nailed clean through their tongue.
But I was
once young,
a charming
girl, head over claws
in love with
you—
protective,
faithful
as any good
angel, my Colchis light
bleaching a
brother’s bones,
you could
say I became obsessed.
I had you
possessed
but Corinth tore
us apart.
Still, I can’t
resist revenge,
death knell
shaking the house
to its dead
foundations,
the children’s
gasping surprise;
oh, the look
in your eyes
when you
found them, coiled
like little
white worms;
a gorgon’s
pale coiffure perhaps.
She may be princess
but I am a
queen,
Medea—
monster
maternal,
with blood
in my breasts
and a glint
in my milkwhite eye.
Revenge is a
kick in the womb.