The blue light of the TV flickers with the face of Medea
Her drawn-on eyebrows stretched tight above her black eye
Nancy Grace superimposed on the small screen –
“Most hateful to gods and men,” Medea smiles
Both in and out of shot, her magenta lips like a marquee
Blasting her as top billing.

Cut to Medea smoking a cigarette in the front yard,
Her bathrobe like the skin of her face yellowed and eaten with age
Medea on the day of her arrest, Medea the Husband-Killer,
Once a teenage girl with killer thighs and ass,
Now a puckered kid-killer with too much makeup
Too much hair towering high toward heaven.

Killing a husband is easy.
It comes with Dateline Special and certain “je ne sais quoi.”
Medea doesn’t know French but she heard this once
On Good Morning America.

Killing your kids is a different kind of evil, or so everyone says
As if so many mothers haven’t strangled and drowned and left
their offspring out to the elements like a sacrifice
Or a pungent cheese –

Before her first prime-time appearance Medea is
A national obsession and “shock news” sensation
So utterly all-American that tuning in feels like an
An act of patriotism, like jumbo honey buns or
Real Housewives of Homeland Security.

Nancy Grace asks the audience if Medea offed her ex-boss,
Boiled his bones with backfat behind the salon back home,
On the internet some woman calls her a bitch baby-killer cunt
Can’t believe she was let out early on good behavior,
Scoring a book deal and some new ball-and-chain.

On the street men sneer about the size of her breasts —
In the green room Medea reapplies her lipstick,
Lights another cigarette, rubs the ash into the carpet.