Footnote, Part III

III

I return on the head of a pin
Borne brittle through the black mirror of three broken days
I court weakness with glancing blows.
I am a nightmare in blue-jeans, smoking a cigarette.
I tower over the lint and marbles
You pull me down,
Afraid I might drag into daylight
What you planted in me.
We have not met now in eight brittle years.

I was an ugly child.
You would cry for me now
Through a night of rhythmic sobs and wadded tissues
I am what you made me

A goddess
You set me, awkward limbs and limp hair
Into a corkscrewed crucible of your design, erotic
In ways the gentle don’t know and the decent don’t speak of
Laid a green finch in one glassy eye, a linnet bird in one curling hand
And years of fairy tales
A time-capsule for the breaking-open
By another like you

As the walls tumbled they came
Others like you
Came and ate of my flesh as the mold twisted and set
Came still as I cried into wet palms and shoulders
Stiff with the ecstasy of the scavenger

I am a goddess
I am Catherine of Aragon and Jeanne d’Arc
The trundling mite in a ball of dew on shepherd’s purple pintle
I am Danae by your font of crumbling sunlight
The bow-scrapings and wax that gathered under Artemis’ fingernails
I am vengeance served improperly in a stew with murmurs of saffron

I gathered the sere, hard berries
And pinched them into rosettes
To pop like beetles over Lycidas’ byre
I killed Marat

I have a coin purse made from the skin of Mercutio’s inner thigh
Which I sewed all up with dainties in one hand
While I tore the wriggling coil, Mab, from his loins
With the cunning fingers of the other.

I unmanned Orpheus with a psaltery string
Then let him cry into my breast
As I sang him to sleep