Long before Horace, women wrote
in self-reflection on their arts.
Let’s take Enheduanna, 2300 BCE,
she etched in clay mí-dug₄-ga—

splendid utterances— in her hymns,
her poetry, of the birth of a poem
like the birth of a child:
Painful. Long. Ending in bliss.

Oh— and our Enheduanna
ripped from her body the very first “I,”
the “I” of ourselves known
through our very own poems.

And then, of course, as women do
after a long day of work,
she brought home crescent-shaped moon cakes—
and fried it all up in a pan.