Yesterday you asked me
Why he so abhorred me.
Remembering the photograph
I’d tacked to the dart target,
Sticked with pins and rent
Gaping with the sculpting tool,
I shivered, giddy with knowledge
That this same marked hex
Lay face down in my bedroom
Where we would make love that night.
On quivering tongue were words I bit to hide the fork:
He always said I was a witch —
Left-handed, strawberry-crossed at birth.*
Vixen-mouthed with cloven chin and
Fixing, glittering eyes.
Such cruel cold aspect
Froze dread terror in him
And he was helpless
In my icy arms,
Once loving, turned to vice.
You wear black capes, he said,
And consort with Jews;
You will never be faithful.
Worse than Judas, you
Denied him as a child.
You had no innocence,
No virginity;
There was no blood when you were taken;
Surely you should be burned.
And so this evening
Having found a witchcraft volume,
I let fall its pages,
Like Queequeg’s bones upon the deck,
To the liturgy I’d thought my own.**
I knew then that he was right
And I was, indeed,
A true Daughter of the Danaans.***