On Iliads

I have been fortunate this semester to be in a class that forces me to write poetry. The professor who teaches my course in world literature likes making students apply and reflect on their knowledge of a text in multiple ways, including creative means. It was for this course that I wrote the prologue/poem I posted earlier, and now we had the opportunity to write another, writing in the voice of a minor character in Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad. I was, for the most part, pleased with the results of my efforts, so I have decided to post it here.

Kleos

All the tales they tell are told of men:
men who win wars, rape women,
sack cities, and take wives. For this
the people write poems, sing songs--
and for this their sons are raised. But what
of their daughters? What of we, their women?
We are our bodies, and if we are lucky,
we are wedded, though even marriage
carries with it a doom: making us mothers.
We are fated to be nothing more
than some man's bride, and some man's mother--

But not I. My name shall be my own,
and I shall be known as slayer of men,
destoroyer of cities, worthy of war. I am
Helen. I too shall be godlike. I shall be
Aphrodite and more. I am woman--
the beauty of woman is mine, and I shall be all
beauty. The beauty that men sell their souls
to love is mine. The beauty that women
kill themselves because they lack is mine.
They shall call me slut and whore and worse
because women may not be heroes--still,
they will remember me.