avarice

I want a snowdrift
in which to keep you, falling
at my feet, abject--

or just you, writing
ghost stories at the window
in winter.  The cold

can't win out over
the warmth of words, slipping through
interlaced fingers

under a blanket
of snow in muted colors,
this endless feeling.

Netjeret

The harbor was a green and fragrant place, a bulwark against the dusty gold of the desert. There were fish and markets, scribes and antiquities. The sheep's-wool and wide-striped coarse cloth of the desert tribes sharing stall-space with the mist-weight silks and fine light linen of the river people, the tumultuous embroideries, sinuous animals and flowers of thread that had traveled from a strange and distant empire.

The scent of the market, nearly indescribable, a riot of offal and onions, thick cakes soaked in spiced honey, studded with nuts and dried fruits. Horses and baking bread, grilled meats and carefully tended vegetables. The endless perfume of flowers mingling with cones and piles of exquisite incense, precious scented oils, attar of rose, balms and fragrances and beeswax candles, the dry scents of papyrus and reed baskets, dried black figs and purple-dyed linen.

The sounds of happy people, amused or wry, light and pleasant, in many languages. The merchants and their customers alike, fat with good living, joking in slippery Greek or dark-spiced Egyptian, with so little of the solemn speech of Roman citizens, and less of the vulgar Latin of the sharp-faced legionnaires.

It was always a mystery, to him, to walk among them and remain unrecognized, to speak to the people in his clumsy Greek without terrifying them into silence. When the sun fell sharp behind the crimson slash of the horizon, and the night rose like a curtain all around us, we drank wine like madder velvet from silver bowls, drank deep. Our lips and fingers stained with pomegranate. Those nights are gone, torn like wet papyrus into shreds against the howling desert wind.

Today my harbor is full of quinqueremes and libernians and there is no bulwark against the legions. Our armies have joined with Octavian's. The remaining men mutter lies to my husband. People fleeing in the streets squeal that I have betrayed him. Hissing like snakes, their whispers tell him that I have abandoned him as I have abandoned all my husbands, condemning him to a traitor's fate. I cannot be here when he returns; how could I face that pain, the wrath of perceived righteousness?

I built the two of us a tomb. I wanted to sleep there with him, forever, the safest place in Alexandria, filled to the roof-beams with the treasures of Egypt and the Ptolemies, the pharaohs of Upper and Lower Egypt, buttery gold and carnelian. Malachite and lapis gleaming in every corner, jasper and turquoise and the silver bowls that once held our wine. I can send another messenger to my husband, can bid him come, meet me in the home I built for our long night together, but will he listen?

I pull away from the wide window, kohl-dark tears smudged along my cheekbones. The view of my desecrated harbor is spur enough to order my maids away, to pull my last pieces of jewelry out of trunks.  I look in the mirror and see, truly, at last. The Pharaoh of Egypt must always descend into the underworld, must weigh a heavy heart on golden scales. I will go to my tomb alone, though it is the last thing I ever wanted to do. I will await my husband, and we will prevail or die. We have no choice.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Kurt challenged me with "It was the last thing I would ever want to do, but I didn't have any other choice." and I challenged Mary Terrani with "King of Pentacles".


This is tagged "well-mined myth" for a reason. I wouldn't even call it "historical fiction".  Can't hit a home run every week, I suppose.

Articulate

If you missed my article on the awdl gywydd for the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Kate Dempsey has graciously reposted it over at Writing.ie's guest blog, Poetic License.  I meant to tell you this last month, but somehow it slipped my mind. Many thanks, Kate!!

Your modestly miraculous Captain,
Grace

haunt

On the days I find
myself thinking of you, there
might be autumn in
the air, or spring, or any
number of times in between.

Harbinger

She's killing baby cockroaches with disgusted glee in her shitty third-floor walkup, for what seems like the eight millionth time, when she hears his familiar step on the wrought-iron stairs. She smiles to herself as she washes her hands in scalding hot water from the tap and grabs her good bottle of gin from the top of the refrigerator on her way out the door.

"Hey," she yells down to the second landing, "didn't I tell you I never wanted to see you again?"

He stops dead in his tracks and looks up at her, blue eyes wide and startled in his face as his mouth drops open. "I recall something like that, I guess," he says, unsure but still game.

"Well, I suppose this gin won't drink itself. Got any cigarettes?"

He doesn't answer, but holds up two packs of her favorite. It's a peace offering, of sorts. She grins down at him and slides her bare feet into a pair of ridiculous cork-heeled sandals. She pulls the elastic out of her walnut-brown hair and runs the fingers of her right hand through the locks, primping for just a second while he's still out of sight. She smooths her oversized sweater down over her skirt and then bounds down the last flight of stairs, gin in hand.

He's still waiting on the second-floor landing, holding two cigarettes in his mouth. He watches her run down the stairs and lights both, holding the second one out as she skids to a stop just inches away.

"Hi," she says, leaving a multitude of words unsaid, reaching out to take the cigarette he's offering and smiling up into his endless blue eyes.

"Hey," he replies, and wraps his arms around her as she smokes silently, the two of them leaning on the railing. She pitches the cigarette butt over the side and turns back in, pressing her face into his chest.

"Let's go for a walk," she says, muffled by his jacket. She grabs him by the wrist and begins to pull away, lacing her fingers in his even as she starts to head down the stairs to the street. He finishes his cigarette, flicks the butt away, and lights two more. They walk close together, hands linked, arms touching and shoulders pressed together, until they leave her block. Then they let go, in case someone that knows them might see.  Although it's not so much her friends she has to worry about, but his, or worse, his girlfriend's.  They walk a few blocks in silence, passing the bottle back and forth.

"Could be trouble," he says, finally.

"Could be," she replies, and takes a long swallow of gin.

breath

Panic has no name
in the brightness of the day.
It just lives inside.

Agave

I grew up in the desert scrub with my sisters all around, drank the cold light of the stars like water in winter, grew tall and strong. I took up the pen at twelve and tore songs out of my heart like leaves from my sisters, leaves we would twist and knot into thread and clothing and homes. Women dressed properly, then, tying their headdresses in gaudy knots, and made pulque in the shelter of rocky overhangs.

I could not.  I tore at the earth and watered fields of doomed flowers with droplets flung from bloody fingernails. I cried out to Xochipilli Chicomexochitl with every breath I took, and he took notice. He followed me down into the hardpan waste and kissed my scars and open wounds, the scraped flesh quivering under his painted lips like the great serpent, rising in flame from under the world.

"Mayahuel," he sang to me, "one night you will bear fruit and disappear into the earth, and all the world will mourn the loss of my favorite poet." His singing melted my bones like boiling chocoatl and we were fallen down onto the ground again, lost in the night all around us, snarling and tearing at each other like jaguars.

I gave birth to many daughters and suckled them, fitting delicate words into the puzzle of strict meter all the while. My flower prince went singing into the night, the songs I made for him sweet on his lips like the aguamiel in my heart. My children went out into the desert scrub to drink the cold light of the stars like water in winter, and I began to lose my language. I wrote in rhyme and in free verse, hymns and platitudes and holy beckoning. I let blood from my wrists in the hopes that it would sing in the silence, but it fell flat to the earth and sluggishly dried, still refusing to speak.

I churned within, seeking aubade or threnody, wailing couplets, unrecognized, into the dust storms blowing through our desolate home. I began to diminish.

One day, when the sun blazed down, drying the shine from my thick black hair, I lay flat on the ground. I pressed my scarred hands into the red dust and began to stroke pictures of the words I still wanted to sing. I could no longer rhyme, could no longer call up jewel-like painted miniatures from the arid scrub, the wizened twigs that were all the words left to me. I turned on my side and wept bloody tears, all the moisture my body still contained flowing into the dust, sticking to my burning skin.  I gave up.

The earth rose up around me like an embrace, its benevolent chill soothing my blackened flesh. I could not sing its praises, nor tell it my story, nor even weep. My body drifted deeper with every hour, my head and hair pressing out of the ground like my doomed gardens bearing fruit at last. I was dry of all meaning, drained of all my life's work, and I was alone.

When Mictecacihuatl rose from the mud beside my face, her flayed bones sheltered me from the heat of the sun, and I saw her jaw open to devour the light. I could not say, then, why it was so beautiful. No matter how hard I tried, I could no longer wrap my tongue around the iambic pentameter of the comfort of darkness, standing tall against the dreadful light.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Indie Adams challenged me with "No matter how hard I tried, I still couldn't get my head around iambic pentameter" and I challenged Lance with "The apothecary's daughter."

the last ritual

lovely recoloring of the Rider-Waite deck 

illustration by Pamela Colman Smith,

found here.

Woodsmoke and bone, raw sugarcane,
spitting splinters into the rain,
on the waning of the moon
we wait, fight impatience. Resist
our baser urges. They exist
who missed, who set out too soon.

I light the fire with my cut hair,
each snaking curl a brazen flare
ringing an alarum blast.
This blazing fast consumes the bone
and leaves only the dark. The Crone
upon her throne sits at last.

The herbs well-pounded, cold and green,
taste of slow death, of sights unseen
by man or wean. How they cry!
As I've become, I laugh aloud.
I stand so tall, inside Her shroud;
hush the crowd--and prophesy.

Questions answered or denied flat,
all cards are laid out on the mat.
Hear that?  The barrier thins.
Circled magic wins over all;
the coming year awaits our call.
With nightfall, the song begins.

The rain now stopped, the air is fell
with mist and life and fear of hell.
Hollow shell of me, disperse
into the dawning of the year.
I try to breathe it deep, but hear
our end clear in chanted verse.

Second attempt at a cywydd llosgyrnog for the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. Somehow, they all end up as aubade.  


For my beloved coven, celebrating Samhain for the first time without me.  I miss you all.

grasp

I hate the steady
drain of time, slipping over
the daylight's edge with
aplomb.  It tastes of secrets,
candyfloss that melts away.

Eurydice at Dawn

 "'Oh, I don't know,' he said. 'Πελλαίου βοῦς μέγας εἰν Ἀίδη.' This was something to the effect that, in the Underworld, a great ox costs only a penny, but I knew what he meant and in spite of myself I laughed. There was a tradition among the ancients that things were very cheap in Hell. " --Donna Tartt, "The Secret History"

I know all the things you've never told me. I know the late nights and the gnawing feeling in your chest, the dreams from which you wake, clawing your way out of tangled bedclothes. Gasping for air.

I know the jobs you've taken and the ones you've refused. I know the desperate twin chains of inertia and fear, the fear of hurting someone who truly cares for you. Sitting up at night, you think of me, but only when you can't distract yourself. I'm still waiting, though. I've been down here a long time, but I'm doing okay. Getting around only costs me a penny, and everyone in this place knows just what I'm going through. I'd never leave you if I had any say in the matter, you know.

Some nights I think you'll find your way home to me, follow your heart down here. Then I could make my escape. I could touch your hand and all the years we've been apart could dissolve into nothing more than the swirling rainbow film on a puddle of water in the parking lot. I could make you remember. I could make you forget.

I remember you, upright in that leather jacket. I played at vegetarian disgust and secretly longed to be folded into your arms. I didn't actually care that you were wearing a dead cow. I have this thing for writers and percussionists. The craziest guys come down here, and it's true, I have my fun. You're not here, so, it's true. Every time I close my eyes, though, it's you. Always you. I wake up from my dreams in tears, muffling myself in the pillow so I don't disturb whichever one is in my bed this time. They don't matter, only the dreams. I dream of you and your hollow days, pushing on in denial. Other times it's of the past, of the comfort of apples, the weariness of love.

I think you are refusing my calls, refusing to believe that I could still be here, burying yourself in the meaningless pursuits of the upper side. Cowardly, clinging to the sunlight you never loved. You don't even play your music anymore. You never write to me, for me, of me. I think you've given up hope. I think you've sold the dream for her scraps of passion, and worse.  Even in a Hades market, I think you're selling the dream too cheap.

--

For this week's IndieInk Writing Challenge, Billy Flynn challenged me with "Selling the dream cheap", and I challenged Diane with "Old Scratch and El Salto del Colacho.  Make it funny if you can--if you can't, make it terrifying."

There is an interpretation of the Orpheus myth that colors him a coward, afraid to die to be with Eurydice forever.  Instead, he defied the gods to retrieve her, because he wasn't ready to leave the upper world.  I find this rather less romantic than you might think.

Jack

Scrape it carefully,
this orb of autumn's dreaming,
carved face, mirrored mask.

apothecary

The scent of rain and stormy air,
a Pumpkin King's candle-lit stare.
Candy corn, preserved, bottled
with hot toddy and some cut grass,
one blazing leaf stuffed in the glass.
Then age the label mottled.

tapped

sticky amber and sweet,
gouged hollow and still too full.
it's not an oxymoron. it's
the way of things

when the future is unsettled
and time stretches out, gumming
up the works like resin,
pitch perfect.

I boil over, sometimes,
and you reduce to syrup,
that dark hint of winter nights
flavoring all I do.