oil on the body, dust on the body

birds and dogs unmasking

a cadaver named brother

What is a king for?

traitor the body the loudness of duty

Polynices, did you think the throne would fit down your throat alone?

brave river of men behind you

a wonderland of death

Is it better to know?

woman-child, relieve us of our weather full of battle luster

a child of incest resists traditional lines of genealogy

the sky was a bright choir of gold

a carnival of brothers

We love war?

soldiers losing their names

gods, leave us to make my name fray

my brother, fury

form and torn

Can’t you be quiet and just live?

Antigone, speaking and acting from the other side

beyond altars and thrones, into the crypt of heart and home

a woman who improperly speaks

who makes marriage with the systematically fatal

Take me with you.

wakes the brother from the cadaver, disappearing boat

what blood and threat heaves us across the threshold, household

we walk every barrens for fidelity to the dead

feeding fine on our common loss, any cost

Don’t leave me here alone.

incest and the last dress hanging

in your virgin’s closet

hoarding conjugal surplus and in debt to its final price

where have we courted this sexed dialectic

I don’t know if I’m a woman here, at last.

subjects severing suffering

are we ruined citizens

any contested king of balm and sin

the error of blood relation

The mother of my own death.

Antigone, a new mother, asunder

some heavy ledger

to taint and tear you, make you cave and kin

my sister of unbearable splendor

Until death do us unite. . .

daughter of cadavers

your wedding underground

a dire foreign bargain

make yourself a stranger, now with your betrothed

Father, mother, brothers, I’ve brought you my eyes. . .

now with your brother

all together dining on the dark

I Will Make an Example

I Will Make an Example

—based on “Antigone Claimed: ‘I Am a Stranger!’ Political Theory and the Figure of the Stranger” by Andrés Fábian Henao Castro

The Limit Case

The Limit Case

—based on “Bringing Antigone Home?” by Valerie Reed

Is Antigone the original cyborg?

The limits of woman, human. Everything put to the test.

She was born into a kind enclosure, like an animal born in captivity, her own family folded in on itself. The dollhouse with no windows. When having a king for a father is a death sentence. Essence before existence? She is eternal and so I will speak of her in the present tense.