Piecework

I 

Cadmus had wept to see the Spartoi bloom.

Where father was craven, the sons were cruel;

Cadmus bled his daughter for her bridegroom, 

Given up at the soil-smeared altar.  

Agave knew the crepe skin, the cracked nail,

Unassuming – the hand she had grasped,

Too naïve. He bade her be of avail;

Still, her father’s hand had fluttered in hers. 

He spoke of his regrets, pleadingly, then.

He didn’t like this any more than she,

This hurt him no less. But, what they’d gain!

He pulled back the virgin’s sheets himself. 

Agave sees her father above her; 

Echion smudges polluting fingerprints

Over her breasts, her stomach. He withdraws,

And soil spills from the chipped neck of her womb. 

Echion roots inside her, now of marl. 

First the spindle, she forms the loose fibres, 

Imbued with her blood. Within her, a doll 

Is crafted, limbs stitched to a limp torso.  

Pentheus is velvet-skinned, a raw pink.  

He lacks his father’s needles, the blank clay eyes. 

When Agave offers him her breast,  

Her skin is not raised with scratches, nor whorled in dirt. 

II 

Pentheus, king, arrives in his woman’s guise.

He appears as a Theban woman: his headband is in place, 

His dress hangs as it should.  

As if that will induce their return. 

That thyrsus does not fool the women, Agave’s women, 

She heads the hunt. Her legs have never before taken her so;

Her arms were never before so compliant. 

Supple, probing, fingers feel the weakening in flesh,

The fabric of the intruder’s muscle loosens. 

Agave pulls; her women rend. The stitches,  

Legs to groin, arms to shoulder, head to neck, break.

It is too simple, it does not satisfy Agave, 

Until she feels Pentheus’ blood returned to her.