one hundred and one lokis!

Loki Bound by W. G. Collingwood (1908)

Loki's Wife by Ros Barber

I hold the bowl over my husband’s face 
to catch the drip of venom, this drooling snake 
they fixed up over him.  A bitter waste 
of man, my man, for a simple prank.  I ache 
for the god in him, tied down, immovable 
as fate.  For my husband’s sake I give up me, 
for my husband’s sake I stay.  My hands are full; 
my devotion now his only sanity.

I hold the bowl until it brims, then run 
outside and pour the acid through the dust. 
As long as I’m gone, my husband screams and writhes, 
the corrosion eating deep into face and eyes 
I used to know.  But we are both changed:  by sound, 
by sight, by the daily rhythms we know by rote. 
I’m bound by duty, just as he is bound, 
the cords not at my wrists, but in his throat.

I hold the bowl, empty the bowl.  This chore 
that brutalises, sanctifies.  And the dish 
between us shields me too, from glimpsing the raw 
shells of his sockets, his sores, his ravaged flesh. 
But I must face the snake, cold-blooded beast 
that spells it out:  we are all meat beneath. 
What did I do?  How did our lives entwine 
that his eternal punishment is mine?

I hold the bowl.  No one in their right mind 
would do this forever, watching the thrust and twitch 
of muscular flank and spine, one creature’s writhe 
reflecting the other.   Memories flake and itch:
my husband’s hands before they were bound, the slake 
of his lips pre-blister, his shoulderblades, his sleaze. 
All I have left is the soft shank of the snake, 
tormenting me with possibilities.

I hold the bowl.  Each time I go outside 
it takes a little longer to empty.  This 
venom, its milky sweet-sourness.  And the wide 
mouth of the serpent dripping like a kiss. 
But the venom, its acrid scent, remember me, 
it says, remember nights mopping your thighs, 
crying for more?  The snake hangs patiently,
its mischievous eyes soldering on to mine.

I hold the bowl limp at my side and watch 
its contents scorch into the earth.  What for? 
This is not the life I chose.  I can’t ignore 
the taste in my mouth, the absence in my crotch. 
And suddenly, I’m miles away, my feet 
bleeding with joy, my nostrils thick with musk. 
The wind in my lungs croons to the fading beat 
of his blindness calling, calling, through the dusk.

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