Queen of the Ninth Ward
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Kassiopeia, your jasmine beauty warmed the air like the language of lost temples.
When the sea grew jealous, you chided him: Sea, you is ugly.
Sea, you is a whore clogged with the devil's short hairs. And the sea flew at you, masculine, suffocating.
Your voice rasped like wilderness. Like the whine of trapped furs. Necromantic.
The sea snaked up your ankles, stirrupped them with fingers evil as tar, pried apart the roundness of your thighs.
The levee broke into scales of currents. Can't sorrow and pity me out of my stead. So he, the winged man in guise
of healer, stole your daughter, stole her in the name of the sea, then receded, turning magnolias
to stone, flowering infection. And your throat forgot how to laugh, spluttered like a cracked engine. [End Page 1230]
Your hair snarled and tangled in stretching crow's feet. Your teeth ground themselves to lime.
After centuries of glimmer, your eyes stormed: Give me back my bones, ugly, you howled into the public phone.
Kassiopeia, proud Ethiop queen: and the wind still stings with salt.
Iain Haley Pollock is studying for the MFA in creative writing at Syracuse University.
