Medea

Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus"

Medea
__________________

“She gave him
the ointment to
make bulls blind”
—Frieda Hughes,
“Medea,” Waxworks
___________________

“Medea, my dear”—
Sylvia Plath said to herself
Stuck in New England

She was tired of being—
Miss Modernist Mademoiselle
Posing so tres demurely
_______________

She felt claustrophobic—
Stuck in a “Bell Jar” future
Just another Wellesley wimp

She felt trapped too—
Stuck like Elizabeth Bishop in
“The New Yorker” str8t closet
_______________

What she needed—
Wasn’t more shock-treatment
Or motherly psychoanalysts

She needed a young Jason—
With Golden Fleece for pubes
To sew her Serpent’s Teeth
__________________

And Viola! Ted Hughes—
Floundering among his Argonauts
There in his St. Botolph's dump

He was big, tall and handsome—
And had a reputation at Cambridge
For being a smoldering lady’s man
___________________

Sylvia dreamed & schemed—
She went to a St. Botolph's party
And bit him on the cheek

Then she got him in bed—
Her fingers tight in his pubes
She could stupefy dragons
___________________

Then he woke from the daze—
Dripping with American bourgeois
Shame and marriage civilities

Trapped like a caged Panther—
In the London Regent Zoo
With two brats & shitty diapers
_________________

That’s when he left her—
While Assia got him into bed—
Seduced by his Yorkshire Pike

So Sylvia began sharpening her ax—
Getting ready to get him between
His foolish Agamemnon thighs
________________________

He thought he could get rid of—
Both of them casting them off to
Sea & carried off by the currents

So that he could begin again—
But that’s not how women work
Some don’t like to be used & abused