Setting Sail
Murphy, Louise
Setting Sail Yesterday is dead, but Apollo's lathered horses drag another day, trailing crowds of hours across the sky, while I stand under X-ray's godless light, paper shirt for armor, breast...
...Hold on...
...The only algebra to lock my gates has not been conjured yet, the poem's unwritten, and Friday won't be Good until this war is done...
...By noon, that angry Goddess, Discord, has thrown the apple of my breast into the feast, my bones are cast, and every choice will start the war, simple peeling and the spot removed, or all my fruit plucked and gone...
...Tomato sauce poured over the hound's reeking fur, she bends her head like Iphigenia, dripping red, shivering with unrequited surprise...
...The Fates have spun and hold their scissors high, waiting to cut my thread, or not...
...Aphrodite, Hera, Pallas Athene, who ate burnt offering in different seasons, sit on the salt stained deck...
...Setting Sail Yesterday is dead, but Apollo's lathered horses drag another day, trailing crowds of hours across the sky, while I stand under X-ray's godless light, paper shirt for armor, breast flesh pressed between two plates, until a bloody drop wets the tender nipple, as if Zeus, that rooster, had stalked into the room, but all the eggs are broken, and the Gods are calling...
...Now the canvas bellys tight with dreams and wind, as night's egg floats again on chaos...
...Louise Murphy Commonweal 16 July 13,2001...
...They watch me sleep, right hand holding my breast the way those Trojan women will hold a certain wooden horse and roll it hopefully inside their walls...
...Hold on...
...Taking on supplies and water for the voyage, I find the dog has killed, not a sacred stag in these unsacred times, unfurnished with beautiful mysteries, but a simple skunk...
Vol. 128 • July 2001 • No. 13
