Siren

I go backward. I don’t want dignity. I retrace steps of fewer men than you might think, reciting halfway mastered stories and songs. I’m overlapped & hungry. I’ve been looking at the soles of my feet & wandering round with pomegranate seeds all stuck in my teeth. Keep the jewelry— I’m wasted on the moon & sea. Bent down gathering shells for my red hair and stinking of seaweed. I can spit a pearl for a penny, shake out mute silences that issue forth their own happy little violences, intimate & daily as the taste of salt & passive as an emerald whose green is never really blue enough. If the green were blue enough you could look at it for the rest of your life. Did I secretly pray last night? What does that mean? What does it mean when Venus enters Pisces? None of us know.

Ellen Morgan Butler

Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, Ellen has been living and writing in Wellington since 2017. She has more poetry and short fiction published or forthcoming in Takahē, Mayhem, Turbine │Kapohau, ANNEXE, and minarets.