Killing Him

 

KILLING HIM

by Lynn Domina

These poems are inspired by the Biblical story of Judith and Holofernes (spoiler alert: he and his soldiers attack her city, she allows him to seduce her, he gets drunk, she decapitates him) and by the mosaics of contemporary Canadian artist Lilian Broca. War and murder, art and beauty—here everything is sacred, and everything is profane. 

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In this lovely work, Lynn Domina considers the Book of Judith. The whole story of Judith is told in the notes after Domina has separated the drama into line after crafted line. In a favorite poem, “Judith Considers the Letter H,” Domina parses the physical description of one of the letters of our beloved alphabet: “Lower case, a chair / she shuffles to slouch into, / upper case a latched gate, guarded, / a shield or raised hand, a sentry shouting / halt.” Domina’s act of writing is an act of sheltering, of shaping event, of describing objects until they live in the words.

Diane Glancy, author of Island of the Innocent: A Consideration of the Book of Job

  

Like the mosaics that inspired this chapbook, Domina’s poems tell the story of Judith and Holofernes in bits of color and light. Taken together, these evocative poems—composed in a variety of forms and voices—create a vision of longing, terror, and redemptive feminine power. 

 Tania Runyan, author of What Will Soon Take Place and Second Sky

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