The Bloodlust of Lady Macbeth

By: Ashleigh Cheshire - Dec 20, 2022

 

The Bloodlust of Lady Macbeth

How close to dying is crying?

You do not yet suffer enough to suit me.

It didn't happen to me,

It happened in me.

You must know the width of the knife

And how it ruined you,

Name the organs it kissed.

I ask this one thing:

Let me go mad in my own way.

My kind of rebirth tasted like blood.

Stomach full of blood

Head full of blood, burning red,

She can feel it at last,

This rage that has been going on for a long time.

There is something female about being dead.

Ashleigh Cheshire

Friedrich Nietzsche, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Anaïs Nin, from Henry and June: From “A Journal of Love,” The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

Olivia Gatwood, from Life of the Party, “Addendum II to No Baptism”

An excerpt from “Elektra,” Sophocles (translated by Anne Carson)

Anna de Noailles from Poems; “Dazzled, Precise” (translated by Norman R. Shapiro) 

Margaret Atwood, from Dancing Girls: Stories; “Lives of the Poets”

Joyce Carol Oates, from Blonde