by Elizabeth Kerlikowske
They’re people we might know
vaguely fighting at a table across the restaurant.
Civilized. Seething. Giants.
I use two hands to cup jagged fragments of the ring she’s thrown
hollow as a chocolate rabbit, rich and dark inside
not cheap like a shower curtain rung
gleam clearly gold.
They stand up quickly.
He sits down.
I recognize them now
from D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths:
Hera and Zeus
(page 16).
She speaks simply with no rage;
fury compacted into smashed ring shards on our table.
He looks withered, not divine,
while she manifests an aura
(page 24).
She is pardoned anything by his infidelities.
Her torso wants to leave,
but her head and feet are rooted to him like Baucis and Philemon
(Bullfinch, Chapter VI).
Zeus begs without moving his lips.
The bags under his eyes empty,
ring reforming itself like the cop in Terminator,
remarrying her public finger.
Elizabeth Kerlikowske's fourth book of poetry Dominant Hand is now available from MayApple Press. She teaches at Kellogg Community College and runs the annual Poems That Ate Our Ears Contest in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
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