CASSANDRA
by Barbara A. Holland
My ears burn. The lobes are swollen.
Last night two huge and numinous serpents
were looping across my floor. The scrape
of their coilings against the tiles awoke me.
They struck, each at an earlobe.
The pain in them almost blinds me.
When I had made poultices
to hold to my ears, they had gone.
Were it not for
the ache and the swelling, the throbbing
like a signaling drum, a code,
I would think that they had only
been forms cast by moonlight
and branches on the floor,
but the cruelty of the bites in my ears
has made it clear
to me that they had surely been s
ent in revenge by the sun,
Apollo —
resentment at my rejection of him.
Apollo; creeping horror. Who would believe it
of the daily sun-blast at the heat of noon,
of the cheer of the elderly,
the healer, the oracle?
My head rings
with a discord of voices,
the song of spears on breastplates and shields,
words peeling in conflict
about a thousand absurdities. They are inside
my skull and I may not shut them out
or muffle them.
They prize from inside my mouth
for release, and I must let them go.
Warning of foreign ships,
a gigantic wooden horse
left as an offering on the beach
for the gods,
the womb within it
and its disastrous litter of soldiers,
which I cannot believe.
Apollo,
refusing to accept my rejection
has made me appear
both lunatic and traitor
with his poison,
now gnawing
into my shoulders and scorching
the veins
in a neck as taut as any bowstring.
From the forthcoming Poet's Press book, Out of Avernus: The Exiled Priestess.
Barbara hits it on the head every single time. Thank you for posting, Brett!
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