I was brought to the House of Atreus as a
young bride by my faithless husband, Menelaus

“You may be the daughter of Zeus,
but as a bastard, you are less than a serving wench

“The gods have cursed you with the gift of beauty
to humble and ensnare men.

“This is your purpose in life and I am willing
to endure you in order to garner peace.”

Those were the words that attended my marriage bed
spoken by the glorious bitch, Menelaus

who though he owns the gods’ lackey,
takes every serving girl who passes,

seizing power from man and God
in his deceitfully sanctified lust.

Now, he accuses me of infidelity, because Paris,
the god’s pawn, abducted me through Aphrodite’s trickery.

I should play one against the other
until Greece and Troy collapse.

until all that is left of either side
is a snake crawling in the grass.

Then with a stone thrown from my right hand, one
snake...
with a stone thrown from my left hand, two dead
snakes.

at my hands their deaths...at my hands!

Some say “Helen caused the war;” everyone knows “Helen” is their excuse for fighting, no more important than a prize horse.

I overheard some foot soldiers talk about Paris’s ass,
as though they knew what mine looked like.

I wish to god, I could follow their prescription,
take them one by one, cracking their heads

against the stone walls of my thighs, until their
acts of war are made impotent in their telling.

Until the lies which roll facilely from their tongues,
lasso their necks and squeeze!

Limp and spent...

their life on a carpet before them, forced
to retell their tales without the swelling cock’s bravado,

patriarch after patriarch will fall
buried in their house’s idol chatter.

People will gather in droves to see Greece die as Troy falls,
watching the god’s whims enacted in men’s folly.

What comes easily to man, men never value.
All men being born of the womb, nurse at the breast.

And so they scorn women, despising man’s common humanity.

When conceived, who was the stranger in the womb beside them that their nature is so belligerent?

Masters of the universe, what slavery awaits your women and children at the swelling of the cock?

© 2004 Sada Shaheen

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