Reinventing Radha

The gallery is a box
filled with gold
thread and mirrors.
It frames the same
old story: Krishna gets
his girl back.

Radha in her cloak
of lotus, stunned
in bronze, face turned
away. Follow her
down the brass river
of her hair, or color her
with beetle-wings. Is she
one, or is she many?

No one is grateful
for betrayals
she already knows.
Throat slaked
with the syrup of forgetting,
Radha sizzles in my cells
like disease,
though my hair is gold,
and my eyes gray
as the headstrong sea.

-- Ouroboros ...