Jezebel Revisits the Book of Kings-Jeanann Verlee
The marriage of Jezebel and King Ahab was considered ”politically corrupt” and ultimately the entire family was executed. In The Book of Kings, it was written that Jezebel was eaten by dogs. After Roger Bonair-Agard; Jezebel Revisits the Book of Kings.
I wouldn’t go out frayed and bleating. Refuse to wracked or wail. I was a holy woman of Baal. I faced the end in silk and jewels, posture, purple. For this my name means “whore”, means “raggedy dance” means “black jasmine” means sweat, stamen, ovary, means “pearl in the wet lap of oysters”. My name means “ruby lipped”.
I lived in a time of men. I lived in the time of Ahab. I am a mother of Kings; born of hurricane and pomegranate. Fed on the breast, I was maker of milk. I passed the streams and the night flowers bent to kiss me. I was evoker of hail, windstorm. I prodded the Gods and they came; feasted at my table, crowned my husband. Mine is a story of love. Women who survive the hate of men are named “harlot”, “witch”, “Jezebel”.
I still hear the dogs. In a different century, they’d of burned me, they’d of pressed my body to the river’s floor. I was a burning fish; silver flakes trailed in my wake. I was silk dance and flutter; maker of tides, of thorns. Girls coward and Men flocked. I led armies on the soft hull of my back. A powerful woman is simply one who has not yet died. Flanked on all sides by men made furious with envy; men gone mad.
I did it for Ahab. He came to bawl from me. There is nothing I would not do. He wanted the castle, I mortgaged my wrists. He asked for the crown, I slayed the soldiers. He sought a dynasty, I gave him the globe. Nothing less than a man would do. Remember Helen?
I was ear to the prophets, Ahab’s wife, mother to Ahaziah and Jehoram; men raised on woman’s sugar-tit. Phoenicians with mouths of gold. I was a woman with hunger, prophecy. Scholars name me corrupt. Name me concubine, hussy, charlatan, “tainter of men”. My name means “wicked”, “unholy”.
Ahab was my only. His tongue, my tongue, his flesh, my flesh. I was a woman in love. They robbed me first of Ahab’s breath. Then my sons. I wasn’t thrown into that pit of dogs, I dove.