Vox Populi
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Judith Sanders: The Sabine Woman
You’re minding your own business—laundry kids dinner—
when along comes this Romulus, strutting and sweet-talking,
How would you like to quit this dusty backwater
and be the mother of heroes?
.
How would you like—he unsheathes his glistening sword,
runs the tip over your housedress—your fat thighs,
your milk-jug breasts, to be painted by great artists,
hung in museums?
.
You look down at the slop pail in your hand,
at your goat, with his cute little face with the stripe,
and you think, Mister, get out.
.
Leave this hellhole, he whispers, following too close,
drenching you in updrafts of horse and cologne,
and live it up in the future capital of the world.
You’ll dine on peacock tongues, soak in Jacuzzis,
get a hairdo.
.
Here you can’t tell Tuesday from Sunday,
a feast from a funeral.
Your husband stinks of garlic and manure.
There’s no money. No post office. Not even a road.
What have you got here, in this footnote?
.
Tea in my blue cup. Morning glories up the fence.
The path my bare feet know…
.
Join history, he insists, his breath hot at your ear.
Here you’ll end up buried in a pit with a pitcher,
your beads unstrung. Come with me, your sons
will be warriors, broad-shouldered and bearded,
like Hercules, like gods.
.
But you do not want to breed gladiators
for this full-of-himself stud, swishing
his leather skirt, cockaded like a rooster.
.
He doesn’t even know your name.
History? You want nothing to do with it.
.
But history leaps from the bushes, grabs your throat.
Your sisters’ screams explode in your chest.
Thatch is burning, sacks slit, lentils spilled.
.
The goat, munching, stares,
as if he’d never seen you before.
Copyright 2022 Judith Sanders. From In Deep (Kelsay Books, 2022). First published in Calyx.
Judith Sanders is a teacher and writer who lives in Pittsburgh. One of her poems won the Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Contest.
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I suppose the image was an accident. The poem is brilliant.
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Hi, Rose Mary, Thanks for the compliment! The image was the editor’s choice. Maybe he wanted to show one of these mythic women overpowering an oppressor. My poem was actually a rebuttal to Peter Paul Rubens’ romanticized depiction. I saw his voluptuous babes fainting and thought, Naaah.
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Yes, the story of the Sabine women usually ends with their rape and abduction, but I think the rest of the story should be told as well. Imagine these women living in the households of their oppressors, gaining their trust, having access to knives and poisons. I’m sure that more than a few of the rapists met an untimely end.
>
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Sounds like the premise of another poem…. a sequel….
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Wonderful. So eloquently speaks to the experience of being a woman we all live. The anger is palpable –she’s described my experience in a nutshell.
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Wow! Love this. ________________________________
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I love the image of the ” full-of-himself stud, swishing // his leather skirt, cockaded like a rooster”
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What a poem! Wild & mad and so completely fascinating. Yes, and yes again.
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