Katherine Fishburn

Incantations of Clay for my own good, they explain the women broken-winged and weeping like killdeer have kept me silent when I would speak sealing the curve of my tongue like a stillbirth in an unmarked jar of preservative kept on display with the malformed fetal mistakes of frogs and snakes and unfinished freaks of humanity § none willing to serve as midwife or nursemaid to the thoughts I might beget as a singular mother in a time of conformity § but what monsters I might have wrought out of the volcanic depths of my womb had I spoken— red mouths gaping and shrieking a brat for every breast that mantles the goddess of Ephesus pausing only to suckle before resuming their infernal clamor: avenging furies with leathery wings that darken the sky and swallow the shadows portending ruin to those who would silence me deny me a voice from the cave or the caldron

Copyright © 2000 Katherine Fishburn All Rights Reserved