ANGLES & VISIONS

(from Angles & Visions, 

publication March, 2016)

THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES 

A strange treatment on love, with echoes 

of Sirk and Rosselini: anachronistic sex

in a cable car above some alpine state, 

a pencil-skirted, platinum blonde ... American? 

A dark-haired man in suit and tie ... Italian? 

She considers their fleeting romance 'platonic'  

but, empathetic to his character and need, 

hands the gentleman a handkerchief. 

She turns her back and he turns his, 

as - cut to mise en scène - he masturbates. 

As an act of kindness, it seems 

enlightened, unlike the attempted rape 

of Athena, the shot load of Hephaestus;

a foster-son stuck on her virgin's thigh.  

Wiped off and dropped to earth 

on a scrap of wool, a boy germinates, 

who is reared by Gaia and placed, 

on Athena's orders, into the box where 

he grows to the length of a serpent:  

                        Erichthronius 

frightening to death the women who lift 

the lid and look inside, the kind of half-man 

half-snake that curls around your neck.