Heather Derr-Smith

Uxor Pilate

I want no country, least of all

this one. Gather in the fields

our wastes of imaginings, signs

and wonders. Subtract us from

our birthplace, gape, opening:

O, birthpang and cry of origin,

thousands of waves on the face

of the lake. Where does a story

of a nation end? Revenge,

a war horse reared back. O

I will kill my own countrymen;

I will kill my own kin. Have nothing

to do with that innocent man, Woman,

nameless, said. I saw it in a dream,

blood on all our hands.

*

Not very long ago, there was a time before hours.

Inauguration

There were, for some of us, new weapons,

tools we found lying on the ground. Once we

came in from the garden and put away our dirty gloves

a fire blazed in the copper pots and suddenly we knew

we could kill him, a king on his throne, thick with flesh.

It was as if all along the pacifists in us had been forging

secret cells, and the message passed through us

all at once, Every war already carries within it

the war that will answer it     get the clubs, collect

the blades, or looking at our hands for the first time,

fingers outstretched, we realized it could be done bare-handed,

yanking by the hair, strangle his neck, or most American

of all, true to our constitution, aim the barrel for the back

of his head, the simplest thing we could manifest, a small labor

like digging up the earth and coaxing the tomatoes to grow,

like widening a pelvis to push our children into the light and arms

Of a country of love. We could kill just as easily, we promised.

We sharpen our knives and now that we know,

we will never forget what it felt like.

Portrait of a Courtesan

Through the door of the surgery theater

I grew tall as a pine   walked like God

walking through the tops of the trees

bathed in light   ringed by blue- gowned hosts

I cut off my breasts with a butcher knife

Jesus said when they ask for your cloak give

your undergarments too   smell of baking bread

in ovens  sourdough starter that multiplies

and never ends  yeast and stars and stem cells

mothers milk on her blouse    smile at the doctor

one last act of compliance    morning blood soaked

the gauze mortared it stiff      once upon a time was

a courtesan and her name was Filide Melandroni

Caravaggio was her pimp   location: destroyed

look at us    girls made in our own image   we

are the lost history of the world

Thomas Cook