A'bao

[corbinsadena]

I also wondered about the spacing, not that it takes away from the poem. I think it draws a dark, eerie picture and puts the reader in a mystic place. I love the wording used in phrases such as "wears their bones," "pale blue fire", "tasting odd surface bile," all great ways to force readers to use the senses. It's hard to know exactly what is going on, however, that adds to the lovely mystery. Good job.

The black marsh consumes
they say

In youth we stood at the edge
and listened

to hear the voices of dead

A'bao was said to sleep there
submerged in fetid water

the old say he kidnaps the young
pulls all asunder
eats their hearts
wears their bones
and excretes the russet oil

that floats ethereal in the marsh
and burns pale blue fire

I've transgressed the law
tasting that odd surface bile
growing wide eyed in my stupor

dizzied by the shifting halls and
lurid shafts

I have met A'bao in the last house
seventeen feet under

he wore my eyes
and I stared at my own blindness
curled up in grief

over my dismembered innocence.