Katherine and Petruchio
After Robert Braithwaite Martineau’s 1855 “Katherine and Petruchio”

Shrew, your bearing is erect, stay true
don’t even honor Petruchio with eye contact.

Good girl, Katherine! Keep it low: if this goes
the way they want it to, it won’t end well for you.

Katherine, look to your chains!
Even your hair is bound with pearls

from your neck to your feet, pearl ropes
run your length. You are cut in half.

You can’t see it from where you’re standing
but from here it’s very clear. The first half

won’t even look at Petruchio, but the other
half can’t stop thinking about him.

Do his dumb compliments pop into your head when you’re looking in the mirror?
Does his idiot face mess with your thoughts?

Petruchio stands in front of an ornate wooden door—
that’s your way out, take it!—but his hand

is on the handle. Behind you a topless woman
shivers in her marble, leans-in to a man

we cannot see. Behind all this is a tapestry, where
the figures walk with their gaze all the way down.

Katherine, look behind you—
they are mourning your freedom

while Petruchio looks straight slick. He gets
all the light, in his green and white puffy shorts

over bunchy tights. He is all teeth
and whites of his eyes, he’s even got a highlight

on the perfect pink fingernails of his one bare hand.
Yes, he’s removed a glove. The bad hand

is coming. Katherine, it’s not too late!
Grab the sword—he’s got it in his belt—just take it.

Show him that you know the game!
Make the player confess, then cut out his tongue.

If you don’t do this, he will brag to his friends
when he starves you, calls you his shrew:

Another word for tame is broken.

—Rena J. Mosteirin

Rena J. Mosteirin is the co-author of Moonbit (punctum books, 2019) an academic and poetic exploration of the Apollo 11 guidance computer code. Her novella Nick Trail’s Thumb (Kore Press, 2008) won the Kore Press Short Fiction Award, judged by Lydia Davis. Her chapbook Half-Fabulous Whales (Little Dipper, 2019) explores Moby-Dick through erasure poetry. She is an editor at Bloodroot Literary Magazine, holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College.