Greek Fire

She held a spoonful of beeswax
above the green fire, filling the room
with royal scent. Ascendants,
watching from between mossed columns & out of old
cracked urns, shivered. Apparition backbones
swirled with frost & honey.

In the faint smoke, visions
& passions the watchers had known
long ago became material: soldiers of Persia
falling from the precipice
at Thermopylae, bloody spears like comet-tails
whipping from their backs;
hoplites running highstepping
over fields of blown grasses
in a day blue as an iris
in a gorgon's hair; a kris
thrust through a Damascene
plum on a polished shield…

They watched her
silhouette, primarily with lust
but some, more knowingly, from within
an inkdrop plummeting between
time and other mediums of process less brilliant.
They shared one eyeball among them.
She dipped her ringfinger in the wax
& glossed her mouth… should she now speak
her only secret, it would enter the world
sweetly & only immortality enters the world
entirely secretly.

^

Biography

T. Zachary Cotler writes from Nebraska, USA, where he is currently a resident fellow at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. His work has been anthologized and published in many U.S. journals, recently Wisconsin Review, Witness, Romantics Quarterly, and The Pedestal Magazine. Contact: z@tzacharycotler.com