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Trojan Mask, Late Bronze Age

Izzy Maxson

All that rotting meat beneath the ivory and the bronze
One would think it would no longer smell like leathered skin,
Rather that closer inspection would summon the ghosts of iron and photo flash, crisp as unstruck
lightning, hanging in the air
So I have to pause and ask, in the middle of the tour
Would we prefer, a museum world?
A labyrinth of the dead, all items given freely for the sake of preservation
There’s nothing moving here, you know
Only the humming of the lights
And the riddles written in the margins of personal phonebooks
The ledgers of the clever, for example
Those who conquer must eat
Those who would eat shall go hungry
What am I?
This is the name of the city Famine
Stenciled on the gates to the hedgemaze and on the hungerstones for when the river gets too low,
Plucked out like teeth from the black soil and staged with soft lighting
Here where we stuff the beautiful world back into its beautiful bag
Put the winds back into their respective corners like boxers snuffling for the bell to start the next
round
If any object of mine were ever placed in a glass case to be gawked at, if I ever gained the prestige
It would be the shabby winter draping of a brown jacket, taken from my grandfather’s closet after his
passing,
Barely worn then but now threadbare with my own few years
Our wooden idols are for burning, and we know what’s inside
These piñatas full of dynamite
Artificial animals full of television laughter
Clock strikes midnight and all the ancient candy spills out the pockets
Mask with arsenic lipstick marks around the mouth hole
One could easily see Agamemnon
Like this
In a mirrored room
Like a teenage girl
Like prom night
Preparing for the bulldance

Izzy Maxson is a writer and performance artist. The author of several collections of poetry including most recently Maps To The Vanishing from Finishing Line Press, she lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.