Promised Lands

I saw you last on Hestia’s hill

head high, solemn and waxed in weightpaste,

holding the Olympic flare defiantly over the valley—

its firelight, bright in marble-star night,

falling softly on matted grass,

its kindling sparks like flies

in measle-blotch blisters and hives 

upon the scarfaced scabland.

 

You ran from the cities because of the mob 

made of ghoul-water and rot,

the whispers that want your fire —

the monstrous gaping men that covet you

and seek to use your warmth

as the hearth of their self-propagating Ogygia

so that they can roam savage

and conquer their Promised Lands,

lands that were never home to you

or your mother

or your sisters.

 

You found your mother’s ashes

in your father’s fireplace,

inseparable from the mildew of its flame,

so you took it all with you in your torch.

It would die with you upon Hestia’s hill.

 

But now, you are upon it 

and the mob is upon you.

Do you know that you will die?

Or will a chop-finger hand 

drag you down to the valley

and claim you as firewood, or worse,

will your bark be too bruised to warm any home?

 

Hold tight to your mother, little one,

hang onto her and Hestia’s hill 

until your fingers fall off,

until the city’s frosted cliff face

claims you in its foaming gnashjaw

and chews you down 

to the mire of Asphodel meadows,

for there is as much place in man’s world for you 

as there was for her,

and she learnt fast that a withering fireplace mercy 

is a more comfortable unliving 

than a sallow, square-hung corpse cold.

 

Words by Dylan Ng. Art by Elizabeth Stevens