Paraded through the streets in chains, she turned
Her eyes backwards, to her burnt home, ransacked,
Walls mosaiced with family myth now blacked
By flame, chairs once set for a king, legs burned,
Toppled tables, where royal courts adjourned,
Her children’s blood plastered across the cracked
Temple marble floors. The queen, bitter, bent-backed,
Looked to the sea, and spoke what she had learned.
No one listened. One guard yawned while the second
Daydreamt of his wife at home. They were young.
The deposed queen’s eyes were grey, like the skies.
This woman would go, Agamemnon reckoned,
To Odysseus. With snarl, lolling tongue,
She felt the bitch, deep inside of her, rise.