I, EURYDICE

I tried not to let my father’s blazing,
my father’s brilliance,
blind me beyond belief.
 
Keeping little trophies of average any-days
in my palms, I smiled when I could do
little else. I listened to the lolling of lazy water
and the stubborn hum of insects in June
and to your sweet harp playing.
 
Even when confronted with the gross majesty
of godliness, I didn’t pale.
I ran as much as legs could run,
I gave it my all.
 
I tried not to let the damp, dingy not-at-all,
the perplexing pallor of death consume me.
I opened my hand, January snow and form,
to see those little trophies, those images of us,
and me and my childhood face sticky with fruit.
 
Whether I remain cloaked in a dirge, neighboring Hades or
wreathed in my father’s amber light or
the sound of Sunday songs,
I know it wasn’t all bad.








SIREN SONG
 
There is no saying
where they were sent to, except out of placenta
and mother-grasp,
with their rum and barrels of oranges,
their kit and caste of captain, first mate, and less,
in that creaking castle,
that floating casket.
They bring vats of oils, bolts of silk,
silky bible page thin as air,
and Vatican wail
and new-slave-toil.
If you’re so happy to hear a prayer,
bring some bauble to this blubbering mouth,
come with gifts to this barnacled tabernacle.
I shall come,
waif-like and slippery-smooth,
communion-wafer-pale and divine proof,
to your lonely bow.






THE GODDESS INANNA DISCOVERS ONLYFANS
 
Up the foot-worn steps
of the looming ziggurat they
would come,
the soles of their shoes thinning
from the thousand climb-ups and climb-downs
of their dogged devotions.
The merchants of Uruk
would hold prayers for me
in the locus of their soul
when meeting with
the daughters of unnamed men,
the canker of their trysts.
Now the Royal Tombs of Ur contain
only dust
and the revetments of
the White Temple
stand only as unread lines in
a book of yellowed paper.
The inviolate women who
gave me honor in their coitional mass
have been forgotten for
stony-faced men and sacring bells.
I find the inviolate women of my wont
on gleaming computer screens-
Oh, pious pixels,
Oh, saintly streaming.
Your temples are full
of empty words.
Your secret rooms,
your sacred pornography is so full
of life.
 
 
 
 
 





Holly Eva Allen is a queer writer currently living in California. Her work has been previously published with Funicular, Sand Hills, and The Slanted House. She is currently working on a Master's degree in English at Claremont Graduate University. You can find her work online at https://hollyevaallen.wordpress.com/.