Cast, and: Fugitive, and: God Mothers

Cast

Suppose the pastcould be surprised

—William Matthews

After Pompeii's snarling dogs we descendthe long ramp into Heraculaneum,circling this moaning deconstruction,with diced mosaic, laced chariot ruts,counters empty of their breads and cheeses.We pass stacked red amphorae always full

into a windowless room. Here, underglass, a woman and her children lie, pouredin concrete from their ashen impressions.The mother shields the eldest with opencloak, the younger two children under herbody. You swear the golden bones are real,

not casts in this city of the shocked dead.For you such stark display is bitter bread.

Fugitive

With new joy the child runs from his mother,space widening between them, the alwaysdiligent hand, the insistent teacher,the maxims she has become: I told you, do this, you can never. But perfect grassand a compulsion of wind propels him,

mother distracted by a just brokennail, by the hem come loose, and the boy bolts,finding new leg muscles like fueled pistons,mother behind, first amused then panickedas he cuts a vector toward the road,the pond, the farther place, leading them both

to a huffing reunion—the first timein his life he can be both bad and loved.

God Mothers

Rush home, ladybug, you live in a shoe.Children banished into the wolved forestby stepmother, the reverse-engineeredoriginal, the one who loves daughterswho solicit the prince with their big feet.Flee with the son across the desert. Leave

him afloat in bulrushes. Dip the boyin the river and hold him by the heel.Give birth to Adonis or Hercules.Isis might assemble the scrambled son,but Saint Barbara's mother did not saveher from the hot sword of her barbaric

father, nor Myrrha from hers, nor Juno.None could, not a single mother alive.