The inherent eroticism of religion,
How red the little g gods bleed
By the soda fountain

And all the women who devote themselves to their gods (plural)
Gods like those that ruled over Greece
The flawed ones
The ones that made monsters
and humans both

Is that the neck of a coke bottle or
A glass skinned girl
Between those teeth straightened by mettle?

I’m telling you, if you’ve ever met a priestess
The real kind, the wild kind
You’ll know well enough what it’s like to be eaten alive
And I’m not talking about by the mosquitos in the swamps of Georgia

I’m talking about
How the glass breaks
How it shatters
How it cuts the mouth of that little g god ******
By the soda fountain
And he’s left wanting for more

The taste of blood is acquired like this; early

There’s no such thing as a benevolent divine

Nations and nationalism;
Religion and re-legend

Grandmother killed the wolf, didn't she?

There is another, separate story
the retelling of an old legend
(all things important are lost in the retelling)

The man turns into a monster at the sight of a
full moon,
turns back again only when somebody loves him.

I think about that grandmother often,
sitting by the fire with a
rifle in her lap-

The things she's seen

The wolves she has left to ****

In the other story, the other legend,
It's the grandmother who loves the wolf
and turns him back

And I think that this one is truer, somehow

Because we are really all just fury things
with barred teeth
that need to be told to come back into the house
to eat the dinner on the table
to stop howling at the sky

all of it, give it all up, for the sake of somebody you love

and if that is not enough, at  least for the sake
of the old woman in the woods
who loved you before your bones were thought up

(hide the blood on your claws, little wolf/monster/thing,
she's just washed the sheets
and they're bright white
the color of the moon
the color of her eyes that were blind all along)

The air always smells of rain
somewhere, right?

So somewhere, you're always knocking on a door
And somewhere, I'm behind the same door
And somewhere, somebody is saying,
'It's for you'

Even though you're not for me, and I
can tell that
just by smelling smelling the air

(Which does not smell like rain)

But these words are for you,
They'll always be for you-

And maybe someday I'll open the door.

It won't be you,
or maybe it will be you
and maybe you'll be here for me

Isn't that a nice story?

You wouldn't believe the stories I tell
myself
while I sit here in the sun
and dream of rain.

There’s a story about Calypso or maybe it’s a legend
or maybe it’s religion

Daughter of a Titan, seducer of a hero
Maybe she was actually the hero

Must it always be about princesses and dragons, girls and ogres?

Anyway, we’re the dragons and the princesses tonight
Summer whites instead of white
wedding gowns-

There’s a bachelorette party a few tables down and the bride looks uncomfortably close to my age

The four of us, the dragon girls, around the table

There’s a story about sisterhood
or maybe it’s a legend
or maybe it’s religion

Daughters of regular men and students of 4 different subjects, citizens of three different countries between us

Sounds like a bad bar joke: a Romanian, two Americans, and a Chinese citizen walk into a restaurant on a Saturday night...

We laugh at ourselves before the punch line hits (and these young women actually liked themselves!)

When you’re the princess, ogre, dragon, girl
When you’re the prize, villain, hero
you get to have all the fun. That’s the secret to all this, I think: have all the fun you can

Have all you can. Have all of it. Be all of it. Complex human beings with complexes of our own behind our eyes- we laugh

The bachelorette party orders more alcohol

China and Romania plan their trip to Greece for spring break over
the side salads and
COVID-19 travel restrictions
Americans try their best to help navigate the travel website

Imagine this: history happens and we live through it anyway.

We plan through it anyway.

Once upon a time, Calypso trapped Odysseus.

That’s the way the story goes, anyway, but every dragon knows
men only come to the lair looking for a prize
he must not have been expecting something that looked like us
he must not have been expecting the dragon to be the prize

And she looked at the man mostly named for a color

He had a real name, of course, but the color was so much more true than that
Names are just sounds, identified

“Oh, you.” A smile, recognized
Maybe she knew him from his own words
or a long, dark wall filled with names from a war from before she was born
or maybe it was more than that

“Oh, you.”
Homecoming
Cliff jumping
A Bildungsroman novel in 18 years

Here it is, hear it coming? You have to listen closely,
it’s in the whisper between two friends
then and now

When is it that we realize we are all just mirrors of each other in the circle of time? Soon, very soon-

We’re coming around the bend of it now, hold on tight and-here: immortality

Oh, you: immortal.

So he sleeps behind his fathers counter,
little prince of a general store neighborhood dynasty

Is he a king, that he should doze on the throne?

Kings and boys- they’re all the same, anyway.
Anyway, make it three if a kind: kings + boys + Gods

A full hand, royal flush, this boy-king-god in his palace of cereal boxes
cheekbones polished by the flickering fluorescent light
the type flies are too afraid to land on, the type they land on anyway-
and here, he sleeps on; unbothered.

No one will believe you but me.

He will keep sleeping and you will keep stocking the shelves of his domain and nobody will believe you but me; justice passes by

The fly gets fried by the light overhead.

You saw it, he slept, and who would ever believe you but me?

Red boys worth blood
listen to the things they can’t hold in their hands
like sun and color
and the supposed shoes of a Cinderella girl
who was really their sister
and didn’t run away from them,
just the angels in the front garden

Burn the house
Burn the garden
Take the gut-punch
Grab the slipper

The watery grave she finds herself in-
tears shed by parents over the rejection of a suitor

The boys are only red because they faithfully cling
to Cinderella’s heart.
She gave it to them for safekeeping

Oh the things that brothers find themselves holding
past midnight.