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Spread out, head down, like a trembling horse 
Inanna pronounced him guilty from within 
the foam of her return; watched Dumuzi 
go screaming into the underworld. 
Ereshkigal felt Inanna’s release as her 
demons returned with the man.
Like the first cup of mint tea poured 
she felt the beginning of bargaining.
The eye of death in two sets of eyes, 
the judgement passed like kisses among the unfaithful.

They saw Dumuzi’s sister, mouth parted, 
lips like segments of a lemon,
felt the scales tipping inside, 
the division of fate:
the ticking time of woman to woman,
the smell of blood. 
Song birds: the seasons fill us with such forgetting.


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