jethro’s daughter: “cassandra”
by Allister Nelson
Priestess, I say you will
spit prophecies like tobacco
from chapped lips, dry from your
wanderings through the wasteland.
The pilgrims will kneel before you,
press their mouths to your feet, but you
will not feel them, your heels
callused from the years.
Deliver their messages or not
the gods aren’t listening
deities deaf to all but you.
You know the divine
only care about exquisite pains
taken, austerities that garner cruel boons:
Like the flowers that bloom where
your blood spills, or your black eyes
that burn any devotee that looks at you
with more than reverence in his heart.
The gods were always jealous
the last man you loved died by
lightning strike, better not to tempt them.
Better to have sleepless nights,
stringing rosaries, bathing in rosewater to
wash your lord’s touch from your skin.
Apollo’s mantras are stained on your flesh
and your devotion is a web meant to cut you
you cannot escape him, no matter what labyrinth
you crawl through, knuckles stained wine red.
The truth is he loves you
broken, adores you thirsting after the future
shooting your veins with moonlight
needle like a spine of the Titans.
Everyone thinks you are blessed, but curses
play like music on the ears of innocents
and spells sometimes cannot be broken
no matter how many iron shoes you wear.
So you keep the temple, tend his sacred flame,
a step away from self-immolation
fading into marble everyday
(he always said you were milky
as a statue).
Someday you will be stone
hewn rough like a rain-worn gargoyle
but until then, you wait, become a cathedral
and your towering windows filter light
in milky blues and golds
Letting only half-truths in.
Dust settles across your caryatid limbs
the pilgrims stop coming, you crumble
always worshiped, never believed.
For how could a god rape a girl?
Divine communion is never forced
says the oracle, you cried wolf
too many times and when the jackal
came, everyone thought yours screams
a song.
A psalm, one of the legions
of the wounded who always suffer
so beautifully at the hands of the infinite.
Girls lie, but the gods are true
and might makes right, so silence
your cries, sew shut your mouth –
you don’t want the kingdom to
think you a whore.
Say it was consensual
there were no bruises or bite-marks
don’t tell them about his grimace
gods are always handsome.
Olympians are just, the women they
desire are pure, they don’t fuck in dirt
they don’t leave girls stranded in the
forest, bleeding, blind, wondering.
*Stay tuned for Allister Nelson’s next installment of Jethro’s Daughter next week.