Catherine McGuire
Curing Cassandra
This won’t hurt, they promise but the bolts from Zeus that pierce her skull are hot agony. Crying out, gagged by some wood bar she can’t even remember why she let them do this. Just two more, they say and call forth lightening again and again. Oh gods! Pain tears through her head and shudders down her limbs she jolts and twitches against the hard couch. The world has gone soft; or she has. There now, that wasn’t bad was it? some face asks, wavering in front of her renegade eyes. Who is asking? Why? Soft face - a woman’s, smiling -- she can’t put anything in context, not even the man standing calmly to the side, saying, Now you won’t be bothered by all those bad dreams.
Catherine McGuire has been widely published online and in print magazines over the past two decades. Publications include New Verse News, The Smoking Poet, Poetry In Motion, Portland Lights Anthology, Folio and Main Street Rag. She has published a chapbook, Joy Into Stillness: Seasons of Lake Quinault, and is assistant director at CALYX Press.
