Cookies with Tyrants

Spreading my hands along the table

I look down at the setting –

An exam. Two hours.

Tortuous, torturous for my back, my hands.

My words crowd to the edge of the page.

They bleed blue and attack at the corners.

I start imagining them as battle lines,

The kind with swords that shout,

“One, two, and through and through!” 

Marching forward with brotherly strife,

They throw out all sense and start to say:

“Tantulus is coming as my dinner guest

Bringing – well, bringing nothing but his gaping maw –

So prepare your feast and your sad red wine

Smoke the sinews and let the cauldrons simmer

Holding the smoky seed of Pelops, cut to pieces.”

I come back and – are you sleeping now?

Why are you sleeping?

I want to tell you that I’m dreaming of your cookies.

For my break, I think of their absence –

So good, so sweet, and soft. I’d like

To take a bite, to mingle it with icing,

Yellow, with the open fluff of clouds;

To sink into the nice feeling, sitting 

With the taste of vanilla on the lips;

Nothing dangerous, nothing dark,

Just simple sugar, slightly adorned.

I want you to bring the, so I

Will you, will you, Will you?

Then I wonder if perhaps

Thyestes had gone to Argos bearing cookies

Would he have quenched his brother’s anger

And saved himself from that ignominy

The awful savagery of eating his sons?