Helen in Situ
The citadel is still.
Empty. I wait inside
my lover
in our locked room.
There are days,
like today, when he
comes for me
and it looks as if
he’s cried,
and I am glad.
His curls smell
of horses and orpiment.
Aphrodite
snaps her whip
of hair behind her
like a grey colt—
she’s always hovering
while we fuck.
It hurts
to touch
every part of him,
and I like that. I bite
the skin above
my nails until I bleed.
Now, he’s picking up
his lyre;
his crude music
once was as good
a place as Lethe
to disappear. Imagine
my husband’s anger.
I watched his ships
arrive like black flies
on a corpse
of shoreline.
Desire has no loyalty,
and I am many
things besides a wife—
he will learn this too.