“Poem About Iphigenia” by Elijah Gibson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elijah Gibson, born in Connecticut, now lives in Seattle where he works, reads, and waits.
who stood in her heart when she quit aulis? her husband, gray-eyed
mycenaean, born with a man’s heart, firmly clutching kingdom and cause
giving his daughter to the wet flame, lapping at her young body. what caused him to view her as a purpose, as a road through?
what flame could stand alone, how could a body be a single source of fuel,
for such ab inferno? for if not for a man’s deeds, the unmaking of a
daughter lay a moot end. better yet, the thread comes from his own wool
he, bringing her as entourage, as tribute to another, boldly placing her
at the table as an offering before it was demanded. not to any god,
but to another man, to wed another hill-dweller, to bind her to
another male design. to make her life about men, taking men into her,
and pushing them out. leading them to sup, to dine upon her table, sitting
forever in a house, dreaming of a grey world where outside did not spell rape. what would the mother have said then? if this
original idea was the fruit that her daughter-as-smoke became.
after she had been gutted, no blood undrunk by the fire, what did she do?
leave simply, part as she had came, and wait. what else is a woman to do?
carry knives. take up a lover. make homes for her blades in the belly
of her only and ultimate traitor, when from long-war he strides, concubined
and spoilt by his own conquest. she makes his peace a lie, as he made
her birthing-bed a deception; her lineage moot (nameless as it was).
each knife is a reminder. “i was hers, and she mine.”