My mother’s rage was my name for fear
when I would come in from the back yard
with a caterpillar in my hair.
But it was my father not me she
hated. I won the Oedipal war
without a fight, and possessed my stern
Jocasta without guilt, without cause
to stab my eyes dark with her brooch pins.
What could be so terrifying as
a victory so clear? Boney in
the Kremlin, pacing. No one arriving
to sign his treaties. Only villains
and whores still at large in the city.
And now the great houses start burning.
