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To Strindberg, on Behalf of Evil Women
Melanie Graham (Lancaster University, England)
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“The fusion of two beings, the smaller of which, shaped like a carp, seems on the point of devouring the larger, as is the habit of vermin, microbes, vampires, and women..”
………………………………..August Strindberg on Munch’s “The Kiss IV”, 1896

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Mr. Strindberg, you are right-
riddled with fleas, flat fur,
fast teeth, ticking against light
we live to consume. Slow
to stir as gorged vampires, smooth as moon,
your blood shape-shifting in our veins,
we deny our hunger, prune
your carefully tended thatch of pain
with the stoic distance
of winged marble.
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We are the microbe, jelly-eyed carp, scales
a fusion of bloodless purple
on beds or canvas, you press
the rails to see us hooked
to museum walls, to feel us wriggling
under your avaricious flesh, the gall,
your sensibility rent asunder by gills
like knives, sharp and blue-
we, the blade you keep coming
back to.

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Melanie Graham is a second year PhD candidate at the University of Lancaster UK and is working on a creative dissertation concerning violence and women. Her poems have appeared most recently in Harvard Summer Review, sweet: a literary confection, Cake, and The Southern Quarterly.

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