by Caroline Streff and Ray Ball
Not content to dabble in golden fobs and adamantine chains,
The hobbler stole his uncle’s notebook
From its hiding place in the hollow of a tree.
It barely held its shape, like a pillowcase all stuffed with dreams.
He chose at random from the chapter of the Horrible.
He sculpted the monster’s trunk from clay
And crowned it with five bronze skulls:
Sheets of patina applied with a brush to craft the muscles, skin, and hair.
Gimlet-eyed and grimacing, its sleeping architecture already coiled in anticipation.
It awaited artificial, animating breath.
It waited to become. It waited to catalogue itself as a constellation
Absorbed from obsolescence
By its conqueror. A water snake
Twined against the mangroves.
When the ichor was dropped onto the five forked tongues,
The two outermost and largest heads threatened to kill the others.
So Vulcan took a sword
And carved them from the trunk,
Carrying the remainder howling and bloodied,
Down to Alepotrypa’s yawning mouth,
Placing it gently into smiling Proserpina-Ceres’ white and waiting hands.
And she named the monster for herself.
She created for them both a story.
Once there was a child, still under the care of Cuba,
Who had a dog that turned mean,
Snarling and snapping at the slightest provocation.
A gimlet-eyed monster waited in the garden.
Her father’s serpents at his tail.
When her parents took him to the woods
To put him down, she swore
She would never forgive them. She, too,
Would have three bodies
Named for monsters and full of venom.
The other two he took elsewhere,
The heads swinging from his fist by their ears.
He set them to guard a waterlogged pavilion in the Caribbean
Rooting them to adult inarticulate facsimiles of their infant frame
Sealing their paws into the stone, never to move again,
His finest work
A chain
Around each neck to ensure their punishment.
Only the ghosting kiss of the tropical wind for their consolation
As their first master stumbled drunkenly back into the fallow sky.
Her hounds are ready to attack.
Muscles ripple into the rock. They guard
An elegant courtyard—its hecatomb of weathered tiles
Worn smooth by rosary beads of tropical rain.
They are her defense against dilapidation
Multiplied by so many bone-frames.
Their eyes still flash with celestial prophecies
From the blacksmith’s forge.
Now and then, poison foams in their spittle.
They exhale death into the spongy air,
While their last companion
Comes to coil her three soft bodies
About their cooling paws.
Caroline Streff is a recent graduate of the University of Alaska Anchorage. She has been pursuing poetry in earnest for the past year and a half, investigating themes of family, ecology, and space. Her work has recently appeared in Alaska Women Speak, Anchorage Press, and Human/Kind Journal. She has been nominated for Best of the Net.
Ray Ball grew up in a house full of snakes. She is a history professor and an editor at Alaska Women Speak. Her chapbook Tithe of Salt came out with Louisiana Literature Press in the spring of 2019, and she has received nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Ray has recent publications in descant, Gingerbread House, and Psaltery & Lyre. You can find her in the classroom, in the archives, or on Twitter @ProfessorBall.