One Work: Circe

and the swine

By Harper Lewis Published 3 months ago • Updated 3 months ago • 1 min read

Circe and the Swine, N.C. Wyeth, 1929

They were swine when they arrived—

your sorcery forced no transformation,

instead stripping away pretense and pretty shapes,

grunting snouts and rough mouths

greedily devouring

everything in sight.

The painful truth robbing them

of the heroes they claimed to be.

*author note: connected this to my previous Circe poem for this challenge, not adept at the changes on the platform yet.

Intrusive rhyme bothers me, except as a weapon.

Intertextuality is my passion.

Formalist/ New Critical are my guiding theories.

My words are mine, not a robot’s.

MA English literature, CofC

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