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”
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