A N  E N T H R A L L E D /E N R A G E D  R E A D E R ’ S           R E S O N A N C E

 

I P H I G E N I A

 

In the life I left, we had named the writing hut at the far corner of our little land “The Pterodactyl Hideaway”–– as distant as one could get in time/space.

 

The cottage was smothered in wisteria, the walk to get there a stomp-romp through crushed purple skirts –– summer wisteria’s delicate violet violence, faint prescient version of the livid leaves, spiny burrs, poison seeds of fall. An electrician Sawzalled a square the size of the electrical box through the wisteria’s trunk but couldn’t kill it.

 

Agamemnon and Abraham, aren’t they the same? Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian patriarchs. Fathers brothers lovers, insatiable racemes and brambles devouring/seeding foreign lands their lying violent greed, claims to claim, refusals to cede.

 

The difficult difference being, Iphigenia, that, unlike Abraham’s Isaac, you were a dispensable pawn daughter.

 

The Ten-Year Trojan War your father’s transgression caused to delay was itself blamed –– what isn’t? –– on a woman: your aunt Helen, raped as a girl, constrained to marry Menelaus so he would inherit her father’s kingdom, the wealth and property (the people), the power and the glory.

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Iphegenia, Helen, who wouldn’t want out?

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The self-proclaimed patriarchs blame women and/or their various gods for the irrational acts they are “forced” to commit. As though they have no agency or shame.

 

Isn’t all violence irrational? Self-serving hubris and greed?

 

This moment in time’s NYTimes headline complicity, another outrage that will be immediately superseded: “Trump Elected Chair of Kennedy Center as Its President Is Fired.” “Is Fired” as though he weren’t the one who did it. “Elected” as though he hadn’t proclaimed the role for his own eminently unqualified uncultured Eminence.

 

In most works of art or effigy, the slaughter of the daughter is not depicted. Rather, a hesitancy –– a cliffhanger –– a thrilling pretense that the inevitable might not happen –– the cruel threshold moment, when she might yet be rescued, might still cling to the faith that the altar to which her father has led her is for her marriage, not her deathbed.

 

Some versions of the story have Iphigenia rescued by the goddess whose wrath Agamemnon incurred with his feckless offense. Not this poet’s. Careening from its summer of violence start with its clambering beastly heads, her devasting end is certain: In this story, there is no stayed hand, no brambled ram.

 

Iphigenia, I too was tired of pleading and bleating and being a sheep. I rescued myself. There is no distance in time/space. An asteroid the size that terminated the dinosaurs is headed our way.

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A  M E M O R Y  O F  V I O L E N C E

 

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A disembodied head. Whose? We are all of us animals. The woman chopping/hands back change

which I read as    The woman chopping hands      then     hands back change

(change as alteration not coin) until ––

Memory of Iphegenia ––

the king’s face stamped in her/ruddy thumbprint.

 

*

The exhilarating freedom of bicycles. And of after school. The sweet careless, carefree play. Alteration of memories on reflection.

Velocipedes and violence. Repeating the cycles.

The persistence of violence. Severe. We are all of us animals. We are all severing and severed and several.

Hands, hearts, entrails, heads.

Giddy, gaudy fish, writhing to the death.

 

 

L I T T L E  H O U S E S  F O R  L I T T L E  G O D S

 

In my schoolgirl grey pleats and navy knees, I would kneel in the church pew gazing at the little gold god house. It was how I made it through Mass, mumbling in Dog-Latin, after the flaking ceiling saints had been painted over like a dentist’s waiting room –– flesh crayola framed with a bloody gash. Carved marble altar, shiny gold door in the center where the little god lived, as in a birdhouse or dollhouse.

 

It was only much later (I confess, today) that I memorized the ceremonial words –– tabernacle, sepulcher. (Turns out his house was a tomb.)

 

I would picture playing house there, rearranging the furniture. Startled when a sleeve of lace dress would open the door, withdrawing chalice and ciborium.

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The bulk of the priest’s balding body blocked the dark center from sight; as much as I yearned, I would just have to imagine.

 

Thus began my life as a poet.

 

 

S T U N N I N G

 

The cinematic, seductive beauty of sounds’ color and movement.

 

From “Iphegenia”

                   The clouds were clambering beastly heads/raining pink rain. Ilium,                                 delirium, wet breath and helmet heat, crushed purple skirts, blossom                               hunger fire, billow with wind, pillows of sweet smoke, no stayed hand, no                     brambled ram

 

From “A Memory of Violence”

                  The trick to riding a bike too big, we stole and rode the grown-up bikes,                          head, hooked, ruddy thumbprint, cropped hair and pleats, scan for treats,                      plastic sacks swing bubbly from handlebars, straws bobbing, fish,                                    iridescent reds and blues, tail plumes, each kept kindly apart, we praise,                        we beseech, we bargain and bet

 

From “Little Houses for Little Gods”

                 house for gods like everyone has, gold, I know, graceful mailboxes,                                   aesthetic, incense and sandalwood, demons, sweep, eat, appeased, a plastic                   cup of Pepsi, some oranges in the morning, nastiness, animal, might just                       want very little to live with us

 

Deceptive allure, draw of our deadly collusion. We are the demons, as the missionaries say, and we can’t be too bad.

 

Whether buried Ilium biblical Israel GazaUkraineYemenSudanAfghanistanSyriaSomaliaCongo etc. or USofA ––

 

We’re as connected by violence as we are by mycelium.