Alison EASTLEY lives with her husband and two sons on a small island in the southern hemisphere. Her work has been published in Eleven Bulls, Snow Monkey, Taint, The Adirondack Review, Tryst, among other fine journals.

CHILDREN OF CADMUS

After kissing earth, fever peels
skin from the hands of fate. It's rich
enough to grow armies of men
spearing each other in that harvest.

Plumes appear in startled waves
wakeful to noisy nails. They buckle
from the heat, brazen as initiation
boiling blood into inky consonants.

Buried in each word, a golden
crested Egyptian moon quivers
in shadowy oracles blessed by
the bright knife of fidelity. Vows

are nothing when the death of snakes
coil deeper than wisdom's betrayal
spiralling with each child Cadmus
sired, then lost to the Nile. No sorry

written in black ever matched blatant
attacks folded into papyrus frozen
in another senseless tomb darker
than the pit of every dragon's eye.

Copyright © Alison Eastley, 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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