No Escape

It’s here: the split

wind rattles

the warped door.

There’s Orestes,

wits away

with the Furies, flitting

the drained fields.

I need to escape

with you, my battler

brother, unfetter

the home’s bond,

hearth-wood fretted

and beating behind us.

The days are down.

I saw my father

pitted under

the ribs, breath

sputtering up

in the gore, her knife’s

flash in the slit,

bath clotted:

tunics glittering

red in the breeze,

mother and lover 

spitted, pallid

in blood’s clutter.

Revenge splashed

family-thick.

Bitter, the wind’s

edge; keen,

the howling down 

in the stoa. You,

my brother, brittle

before the whirl,

leave me hurling  

after you, panting.

Halt and slumping,

slump and gathering,

gathering red.

The bodies will burn

back in the palace.

Iphigenia’s still dead.