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Beware The Wrath Of Herodias - Subverting the trope of victimhood

 Herodias by Isabella DeSendi

 

In your orgasmic stupor, you sleep

     with a man’s severed head in your lap

 

and in the man’s head, a dry tongue

     dead as a slug in late September.

 

In nature, brutality is law and there is nothing

     more beautiful than the body of another

 

being whipped or chained or scoured because it means

     that we’ve survived.

 

What else is ecstasy but the light

     Cairo has chosen to paint you in.

 

Even the natural shadows that rest against

     your eyes, soft and gray as unfurled sails

 

are at peace with the small wreckage

     like a gift in your hands.

 

I know it’s something stronger than sleep

     which takes you now—

 

you’re tired of enduring.

     Walking down Broadway at night, I imagine

 

mutilating every tongue that harasses the body

     I perceive as mine.

 

Herodias, teach me not to feel

     regret, to like the sound a neck makes

 

when it breaks, the blade cleaving

     clean through bone. I’d give anything to know

 

the pleasure you feel, his head

     resting where it is now. Show me. Put a knife

 

in my mouth. Leave a hole in my body

     big enough for you to touch.

 

***

Beware the wrath of a woman …

‘This poem was inspired by Francesco del Cairo’s Herodias with the Head of Saint John the Baptist which I first stumbled upon while walking haphazardly through the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Looking at Herodias, I felt seen, understood. I had just arrived at a pivotal point in my life where I was learning to turn from grief toward rage. Ecstasy was what I saw when I first caught a glimpse of Herodias holding the head of her accuser. The euphoria and control she displays are undeniably radical. She bewitched me. She showed me it was possible to subvert tropes surrounding female victimhood at a time when it felt like I would always be under the thumb of my pain. Writing this poem helped me discover the delight that comes with reclaiming power, which for the writer, only happens after words appear. Looking at Herodias gave me the courage to get these words down. It showed me I could be in control of how I processed trauma. It helped me see myself clearer. But this is also the power of ekphrastic poetry. Cairo's work made visible what I was already feeling and connected me to a narrative that was bigger than my own. Ultimately, it helped me see beyond sorrow, despair, contempt—and what waited at the end of it all was this: pleasure, power, bliss’ (Isabella DeSendi)


***

‘Herodias was one of the Bible’s most famous villainesses. She was a Jewish princess and the ruler of Galilee. She was the wife of the famous Herod Antipas, who played a big part in the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. Herodias is best known for prompting her daughter Salome to have John the Baptist’s “head on a silver platter”


***

 Isabella DeSendi is a Cuban-Italian poet living in New York City. In the past year, she completed her MFA in poetry at Columbia University and was selected as a finalist for both the 2017 June Jordan Fellowship and Narrative Magazine’s Annual Poetry Prize. Isabella currently works in finance 


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