The Roman God of Agriculture, by Melinda Thomsen

Saturn Devouring His Son, by Francisco Goya (Spain) 1823

The Roman God of Agriculture
 
Saturn eats his son’s head first, next
gorges on an arm. The child hangs
in Saturn’s grasp, naked and limp.
 
The corpse doesn’t look childlike,
with muscles defined as if already 
grown to manhood, but the story 
 
goes that Saturn ate his infant children.  
Look at his eyes with irises, bullet
holes within the sclera.  He stares 
 
stupidly into his wild haired future
fueled by the tang of vernal blood  
and consumes his only happiness. 
 
At the Museo del Prado, surrounded
by gold trim and black lacquer, Saturn  
crushes warm bones in his maw 
 
before us in real time, but we swear
we’d never do something so gross, 
and move on, once again. 

Melinda Thomsen

Melinda Thomsen is the author of Armature from Hermit Feathers Press, and her chapbooks Naming Rights and Field Rations are from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, New York Quarterly, Poetry East, Tar River Poetry, The Comstock Review, among others. She lives in North Carolina and you can find her on Twitter at @ThomsenMelinda or at www.melindathomsen.com