After Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Beheading Holofernes (Uffizi, 1620)

Because I know what rough work it is to fight off

a man. And though, yes, I learned tenebroso from

Caravaggio, I found the dark on my own. Know too



well if Judith was alone, she’d never be able to claw

her way free. How she and Abra would have to muster

all their strength to keep him still long enough

to labor through muscle and bone. Look at the old

masters try their best to imagine a woman wielding

a sword. Plaited hair just so. She’s disinterested

or dainty, no heft or sweat. As if she were serving

tea—all model and pose. No, my Judith knows

to roll her sleeves up outside the tent. Clenches

a fistful of hair as anchor for what must be done.

Watch the blood arc its way to wrist and breast.

I have thought it all through, you see. The folds

of flesh gathered at each woman’s wrist, the shadows

on his left arm betraying the sword’s cold hilt.

To defeat a man, he must be removed from his body

by the candlelight he meant as seduction. She’s been

to his bed before and takes no pleasure in this.

Some say they know her thoughts by the meat of her

brow. Let them think what they want. I have but one job:

to keep you looking, though I’ve snatched the breath

from your throat. Even the lead white sheets want

to recoil. Forget the blood, forget poor dead Caravaggio.

He only signed one canvas. Lost himself in his own

carbon black backdrop. To call my work imperfect

would simply be a lie. So I drench my brush in

a palette of bone black—femur and horn transformed

by their own long burning—and make one last

insistence. Between this violence and the sleeping

enemies outside, my name rises. Some darknesses

refuse to fade. Ego Artemitia. I made this—I.