the high priestess sits still
on her throne
her mottled hands beginning to sprout veins
Like the roots of an ageless tree
her eyes sinking low to the earth, lids heavy with sleep
the abstract temple, mismatched in quilted sheets and mangled ceramic fragments
encompassing her victims, the children brothers Romulus and Remus
who play under a drizzled chorus of shattered glass
and winter hesitates as she raises her roots to a flame of Hell
fuels the pyre with white snakeroot and , suckling from the Jack-in the pulpit
feeds the ashen embers once again
