Briseis Dreams of Ships
The sky is supple lambskin. Wraps me fetal,
unrolls me
over marble floors. I burn myself sage,
welcome delphic sighs
into my braids. Slick
as heated fat. I shake arthritic knobs
of bone and loose
my anchor, plunge
my masts into water, aqua-
marine eye that resists
then floods. I thirst for lightning
and the gift
of sight. Body shudders then collapses
into the trees
that built it. Golden dust diffused
into the nighttime,
holy veins
that run beneath the ground. My tongue
drags rocks and moss,
collects hisses
from beneath
dark corners of the soil.
A voice erupts
like a vase, like oil that flames, I flame into
the sound of my
own shatters.
Elizabeth Theriot grew up in Louisiana and earned her undergraduate degree from University of New Orleans. She currently lives in Tuscaloosa, where she is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama. Elizabeth works with Black Warrior Review as Nonfiction Editor and with the program as Assistant to the Director. Her publications can be found online in OCCULUM, Tinderbox, Requited, Pretty Owl, and Alyss, forthcoming in Rogue Agent, and in print in The Mississippi Review.
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