therese

by Allister Nelson

Little flower of Hell, where the clear creek

runs.

Woodwind reeds grow on the Styx, in soil

of blood.

I go a witching down in the brine, digging

a stick through the mud.

Golden fish gleam, alight in the stream.

I am a woman of mud.

Whipporwill Therese, I have no King,

only lovers I left in the lane.

Two pence a heartache, three pence a

distaff, the run of my fiber is blood.

Hardcore, recoil, my skirts are a gun.

I go where the wild fox runs.

Two score and twenty days I died long ago –

I cannot do this without you.

So I reach out my hands, my lustful green hands

to catch on the penny inside you.

But Devil, you are quick, and Devil, inside me,

I’m gutting myself like a blind man.

Give that blind man a knife, that blind man a wife,

and the Blind God does not kneel before me.

This knife is my time, a giver of rhyme,

and bread rises on yeasty foremeat.

A sliver of meat, the dogs of Hell’s beef:

I take up my quarrel with no man.

Instead, to the stars, I take to my arms,

a moon cannonball is my Trojan.

So on the pondside, the Little Flower of Hell

reads fairytales Grimm, ill-begotten.

Apocalypse Child, the Devil’s Bride,

she has no masters

before him.

They walk and they talk, they swim down the Nile.

And each one kills the other in the morning.

Over coffee, over wine, I’m doing my time

in the Demiurge’s prism of mourning.

So clad in a ghost, so white I’m the snow,

I blanket the forest in hoarfrost.

Sterile yet fertile, deserter of deserters.

  My girdle . Aphrodite, . . the chorus.

Click here to read Allister’s bio.