Setting Sail - Poem

   Yesterday is dead,
   but Apollo's lathered horses drag
   another day, trailing crowds of hours
   across the sky, while I stand
   under X-ray's godless light,
   paper shirt for armor, breast flesh
   pressed between two plates,
   until a bloody drop wets the tender nipple,
   as if Zeus, that rooster,
   had stalked into the room, but all the eggs
   are broken, and the Gods are calling.

   By noon, that angry Goddess,
   Discord, has thrown the apple of my breast
   into the feast, my bones are
   cast, and every choice
   will start the war, simple peeling
   and the spot removed,
   or all my fruit plucked and gone.
   The Fates have spun and hold
   their scissors high, waiting to cut
   my thread, or not.

   Taking on supplies and water for the voyage,
   I find the dog has killed,
   not a sacred stag in these unsacred times,
   unfurnished with beautiful mysteries,
   but a simple skunk.
   Tomato sauce poured over the hound's
   reeking fur, she bends her head
   like Iphigenia, dripping red,
   shivering with unrequited surprise.

   Now the canvas bellys tight with dreams
   and wind, as night's egg floats again
   on chaos. Aphrodite, Hera, Pallas Athene,
   who ate burnt offering in different seasons,
   sit on the salt stained deck. They watch
   me sleep, right hand holding my breast
   the way those Trojan women will hold
   a certain wooden horse
   and roll it hopefully inside their walls.
   Hold on. Hold on.
   The only algebra to lock my gates
   has not been conjured
   yet, the poem's unwritten, and Friday
   won't be Good until this war is done.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Commonweal Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group