Betsy Howard

Capture the Flag

You sang, Muse, men raged, towns burned, horses lied.

Hid in the middle of Homer’s twin song,

Two Argives in the Trojan camps stole sly

By night a golden chariot Rhesos

Loved, and led away his handsome steeds.

The Man of Twists and Turns took Dolon down

And Diomedes laughed the racing pair

Back to the camp carved out along the sea.

Tonight, it’s Iliad Book X again

In the backyard, teams divided, hidden

Flags. All shouts, and stealth, and whispered laughter.

You muse, singing over the summered night—

You and your cricket choragus sustain

Footfalls of neighbor kids combing the yard

For chariots—or an old kitchen towel

In the stump, guarded against the raiders.

Purim in Susa

Shining Ishtar sought a husband for her throne,

sent a bull, killed a friend:

The King of Uruk weeps.

Exiled, Ishtar drew King Xerxes from his throne,

killed a bull, saving men.

Mordecai, sing on.

Betsy Howard is as an assistant professor of literature at Bethlehem College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and an affiliate researcher with the Center for the Premodern World (Univ. Minnesota). Her recent academic work includes essays in Religion and the Arts and Victorian Poetry, and her creative essays have appeared in Between Two Cities and Writing in the Margins. Her poems have been published in Summit Avenue Review and Tower Light.