Cassandra Teaches Everything to Her Brother

By Kathleen Kirk

and watches, more amazed than annoyed,
while everyone listens to him. The barn still burns down
when Gus uses a hand-held flame thrower to kill weeds,
but they win the Trojan War
and the Student Council convinces the administration to approve open lunch.
Cassandra’s imaginary daughter uses mascara
and an eyelash curler. Nobody’s heard of backlash.
How can women liberate themselves
if Agamemnon can’t even get his head out of a towel
long enough not to get murdered in his own bathtub?
Not believing in linear time is not the same as the Power of Now.
Not believing in linear time is not the same as schizophrenia.
Cassandra resents psychological interpretations
of her prophecies.
That’s just more backlash, which, like her, nobody’s heard of.

This entry was posted on June 3, 2012 at 12:00 am and is filed under Features, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.