Emma Bolden

ARACHNE BEFORE THE GODS

A summer sharp as venom, a warp
and a weft and a woman’s work

means always working. The gods weren’t
listening because they were gods.

I tried to tell them nonetheless. That
even if divine, any will that shrinks another’s

is a will that must be punished. The gods
said that’s none of my business. Of course.

In the room loomed my own heat and speed
and the blood rubying my palm, the tender

bracelet of pain as I passed the shuttle back
and forth again. It is unwise to open

a stranger’s wrapped gift, to offer your own
breast to all of hunger’s mouths. It is unwise

to tell a truth you know to be the truth,
to forget that the gods play-carry us

in their mouths like cats, and so they must be
treated, tempted, a lurid little yarn above

their heads. I gave the gods only the story
of their own nature, though the gods have

forgotten that they did the same to me.

EMMA BOLDEN is the author of a memoir, The Tiger and the Cage (Soft Skull), and the poetry collections House Is an Enigma, medi(t)ations, and Maleficae. Her work has appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, the New England Review, The Seneca Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, and Shenandoah. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, she is an editor of Screen Door Review.