Four Women, v2

[brynmawr1]

Four Women
 

First there was the woman
who had to play a harlot
to claim even an inch

of her rights as a woman.
Then there was the harlot
who, in ancient parlance,

repented, although perhaps
she was called a harlot
simply because she was

a migrant, a foreign woman.
Then came this foreign woman
whose lot, in ancient parlance,

went much worse than harlot
when, during a famine,
with neither son nor brother,

her husband died of fever.
Finally came this woman
who had a migrant husband,

whose king first made her harlot
then widow then wife then mother
of his son and successor

while he became a hero,
an icon of repentance,
and she remained no more

than woman, wife, mother:
the last of the four women
mentioned by Saint Matthew
before the Ever-Virgin.

Hi River,
I really like the story here. However, I think it would be more effective if you were more specific about each women.  Use their names, make them real and then make it poetic and brutal.  Force the reader to care what these women went through and why it matters.  I do think that the piece is more effective near the end but really the poem ended at L2, S9 the rest implied if properly set up in the previous lines.
Take care,
bryn