The underpaint reveals a wheel of fire which blisters at her skirt,
pulling the ox-cart herdsman with the ugly Neolithic grin
and castanets, scumbled and lost in the picture to the left,
of Saturn's orgiastic brunch. As she baskets
the head of Holofernes, her scabard drips that foul,
wry breath across the plains of Shinar.
Her breasts, barely seamed into her peasant dress,
are already pumped with milk. In sanguine chalk
I always sketched her vindicating some city on a hill,
La Libertad incarnate, hatcheting away at fish-mouthed men
who grub for carrion bugs in the light of a warrior moon.
Here, in the ember light of my mother's bedroom home
in Aragon, I paint her weaning a boy-king from the sword,
a pale kiss to unburden a world of endless molten maelstrom,
the monumental Shoah seen through the eyes of Shad.
Sluttish the man approaches her; she burns to make
mincemeat of his balls. Godoy, lover of the Queen of Spain
must pay for the cries of the guillotine again
across the Plaza Mayor. This Sycorax, one of my favorite
former selves, by way of Judith's wail can weave
one spell and carry it out as well; the cattle boys
at least will thank me for it; while poets
of the Andalusian earth carry his coffin
to the center of the city, where we'll off it up to the gods
of Amazon and England. The greening smoke
from his bones will form the finest silt
for us to bathe in, lavender sea salts to singe
remembrance of last love's loss, so delicately spent.