queen of mycenae

my mother tried to abort me but it was too late i thought you were indigestion 
she used to say as if i had put one over on her in order to get born fed up with
my sister she whispered iago-like in my father’s ear till he brought his shoe down 
on my sister’s shoulders like a pumpjack on an oil derrick or a man cutting sugar-
cane with a machete i read the oresteia in college for a class called tragic drama 
& human conflict father murdered daughter for auspicious sailing weather all 
well & good but it was the mother clytemnestra stole the show made me sit straight 
up in that library cubicle tending her righteous anger like a hot-house flower 
biding her time ten years till the king came back triumphant from troy concubine 
in tow soaking his war-weary body in the bath she threw a net over him stabbing 
him again & again until the water ran red as if she couldn’t wait one more second 
to make him dead we could have used a mother like that my sister & i lioness 
for her cubs a woman who took it all the way come what may no one least of all 
penelope can hold a candle to that