Her hair is tangled lace,
eyelashes like spidery ink brushed on sickly pallor.
Her wings are matted and dark and sharp,
a spiked halo stark against the watercolor of dawn.
Her talons
latticed and rutted and hooked
clutch her prey like a coffin’s embrace.
That’s a harpy’s duty, after all.
Her lips purse and her ears muffle their whimpered pleas,
mean-spirited and selfish and eternally preoccupied.
She is the perpetual villain of Greek tragedy,
cheekbones carved of marble and eyes liquid and nails like serrated teeth.
Her gorgon’s gaze is a razor –