after Bouguereau’s Orestes Pursued by the Furies, 1862
Wrath has loosened the last screw—I’m all hell
-mouthed and fang-toothed now, not fit
for any other job but this—the baring of my breasts,
lowing the hound-song for your hide. Against the night
I gleam, a skin of turned-on moons. What woman hasn’t felt
the knife some son calls justice? I know blood,
how it is not the end but the beginning.
The man at the center of me is grieved, almost
deserving of pity, but he regrets the consequence
and not the crime. I could forgive but am not that kind