How Women Begot the Bible

She sits quiet, drunk on her own anger
again & his despicable

drips down each fang just like
the bourbon from out his pores—

don’t misunderstand, she’s seasoned, racked up
husbands & guzzlers, & all she learned

from Mother who was no princess &
all the grandmothers dating back

to the Revolution & perhaps even back
to Babylon, too, the kind of ladies

whose mouths keep ready at the draw
& even—sometimes—a knife

in the boot or under the cuff but always
(all ways) a foot out the door

& no time for red ribbons in their hair
or the tipped-hat gallantry of sailors &

cowboys, no, just a girl & her horse,
perhaps, or her pen or her knuckles

or her two good feet, & today he’s chiding her
again & she knows someday soon—

not tomorrow, but one day—that sleeping quake
in her will erupt & the whole house

will be on fire & she’ll be gone so quick
he’ll wonder if she was ever real, maybe

just a night vision or a made-up thing
like a Jackalope or Medusa or God.

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Originally published in Flapperhouse and appears in Verlee’s third book, prey.