Reap the Rules
(𒀭𒉿𒉌𒄀𒅕 𒆪𒌌𒆷𒀝)

Sonya Taaffe

The glass in my veins

still remembers white sand.

Gold-stopped, the head of Crassus

lolls beneath the raft of the filling station,

a reliquary of fossil greed.

Lady whose name I cannot translate,

of heavens and chariot wheels

rolling out the signature of war,

give me enough to see this hunting’s end:

the unhorsed king, the lion at his throat.

I have drunk so long from this bowl of pomegranates,

dry and bloodied as a broken heart.

The rod flowered and its petals were flames.

Author: Sonya Taaffe

Sonya Taaffe’s short fiction and poetry have been collected most recently in As the Tide Came Flowing In (Nekyia Press) and previously in Singing Innocence and Experience, Postcards from the Province of Hyphens, A Mayse-Bikhl, Ghost Signs, and the Lambda-nominated Forget the Sleepless Shores. She writes about film for Patreon and remains proud of naming a Kuiper Belt object.

 

Photo credit: Rob Noyes

View all posts by Sonya Taaffe